Chelsea: Four worrying trends revolve around Frank Lampard, Kante and Kepa

The first half of the season has been a rollercoaster for Frank Lampard’s Blues, with Chelsea in a situation that could well turn out be a success or disaster. While it is still too early to judge the progress, there are certainly some worrying trends.

The outlook of a team in fourth place in the Premier League, in the knockout rounds of the Champions League and the FA Cup beckoning should be a positive one. Add the fact that a legend-turned-manager is overseeing the integration of academy graduates, and the club is in a perpetual feel-good moment. Beneath all the “transfer ban”, “loss of Eden Hazard” and sentimentalism, though, lie a slew of potential problems that portray a slightly different story. These problems do not relate to external factors, purely rising from Lampard and his current crop of players.

1. Frank Lampard’s team selections

For all the hype and love Frank Lampard’s triumphant return to Chelsea engendered, it’s become quite unavoidable that this is only his second year in management.

Chelsea started the season with a very high-octane brand of football, employing the high-pressure tactic to force the opponent into mistakes and punish those mistakes with quick build-up play. Lampard’s gung-ho style of play is quite similar to that of Jurgen Klopp’s, including the cost: the process of making the opposition submit means the players expendd huge amounts of energy.

Employing this tactic throughout a season requires well-planned player rotation to minimize the inevitable fatigue.

Lampard, though, has insisted on playing only about 14 players, overworking them on multiple occasions. The predictable result was fatigue ensured Chelsea’s press progressively faded away.

Losing the press induced Chelsea to adopt a game plan that countered the opposition’s tactics rather than stake an identity of its own. While this worked well in big games, the team found it difficult to break down teams that shut up shop and played on the counter. Chelsea lost games because Lampard did not rotate effectively or come up with a plan B, something his predecessor was hugely criticized for.

Ironically, the position that requires the least rotation has been rotated the most: centre back.

Two centre backs need to play together on a consistent basis to form a partnership, which, while it could be error-prone in the beginning, would improve in-game positioning and marking in the long run.

Lampard has constantly rotated between all four of his centre backs, making it impossible for even one solid partnership to be formed.

To his credit, Lampard’s in-game management has been good (as has his man-management on most occasions), but he has mostly used it to clean up the messes he created with his line-ups.