Chelsea: Four lessons learnt from Liverpool shellacking

Chelsea put up a fight briefly, but overall the loss to Liverpool was a shellacking. What did Frank Lampard and company learn going into matchday 38?

Before playing Liverpool, Chelsea needed just one point to qualify for Champions League. Afterwards, the same is true but the mood will be much more sour and tense heading towards Sunday. Liverpool won 5-3 and only briefly looked as though they would let go of their lead. What did Frank Lampard, the club, and the fans learn from this one?

1. 3-4-3 is a trump card, not the whole deck

Lampard had no real other option and it was kind of known before the match anyways, but 3-4-3 is not a formation can run with consistently in their current form. It works very well against sides susceptible to counters and fluid movement, but less so against solid defensive teams that flow and press themselves.

Furthermore, its own strengths can be its downfall too. The back three can help to create lots of unnatural overloads up high, but if all three are not perfectly in sync it collapses quite easily against smart forwards. A lot of the creativity is removed from any one player and is placed on to fluid wide movements, but if any one player in that movement is not where they need to be it goes flat.

Again, Lampard had no real alternative option with N’Golo Kante injured and his recent propensity for dual eights. Playing Jorginho deepest in midfield would have been even more dangerous than playing him in a pair with Mateo Kovacic. A 4-2-3-1 would have been pulled all around to cover the flanks, leaving the other one open. In short, without Kante, Lampard picked the best of a bunch of bad solutions.

The signings coming in for next season strongly indicate 4-3-3 or some variant of it will be the main formation next season. That does not mean Lampard cannot use a 3-4-3 against certain opponents, but Liverpool was surely not going to be one of those teams.