Four tasks for Chelsea’s first midseason winter break: Reset and refresh

2. No rest for the management

Lampard and his staff need a break too, but theirs must be a short one. The management staff needs to come back quickly, while the players are still away, to comb over the season so far.

Preseason and the first few months were largely the up and down form expected. The winning run showed that these tactics and strategies can work. And then the post November break showed something else. Lampard and his staff need to figure out what worked, what is working, and what will work going forward.

The last two months can easily be written off as fatigue struggles. But the key is to find out how much that is actually the reason and how much needs to be tweaked for the run in. Lampard’s tactics have stabilized as of late and that may be part of the issue.

Whereas the squad once flowed between 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 easily, now it feels like more of a chore. The 3-4-3 sparked the initial winning run, but since then it has been used sparingly. Players returning from injury and falling in and out of form has affected this of course but a solution needs to be found.

These next few weeks need to be about finding the right balance for the players Lampard trusts. If that comes in a 4-3-3 or a 3-4-3 so be it. Finding the right tactics for the run in now can make or break the remainder of the season.

3. No rest for the board as a rule

Since the board has put in minimal effort for the last year, they should not get much of a rest at all (if any). Since January was a wash, rightly or wrongly, they need to throw all their focus into planning for the summer now.

Now. Not in June when the window is set to open. Not in April or May when Liverpool is already laying ground work for precontract signings. Now.

Lampard, Petr Cech, and the board needs to sit together this week and map out their entire summer plan. They need to find every position that needs strengthening and they need to create shortlists for each. Those shortlists cannot be just a single player either; they need to be several players deep with several capable of being targeted at once.

The board has all too often lived on a policy of one target at a time and waiting to the last minute. That will not work this summer. Chelsea already lost two windows, one by order and one by choice, and they need to play catch up.

Lampard has his 14 or so trusted players and that may whittle down yet. The board needs to support him in refilling the squad back towards a suitable 18 plus. Now is the opportune time to do that when things go quiet.