Tactics and Transfers: Congratulations to Frank, Jody and Chelsea

Tactics and Transfers is coming to you late this week as the Premier League has concluded in a similar fashion.

Frank Lampard and Chelsea could have been relegated and out of the FA Cup in the first round all while failing to get past the group stage of the Champions League; I would have found a way to defend him. I need to acknowledge that in advance. He has succeeded this season beyond reasonable comparison.

No team in world football lost a player as good as Eden Hazard last season. Certainly, none did so while also having a transfer ban. Lampard took over a Chelsea side on the back of its second player revolt in two seasons—one that was figuratively on fire—and managed to right the ship while maintaining a competitive pace. People forget there were many pundits who felt it would be a reasonable success if Chelsea finished in the top 10, let alone top four.  Such was the state of the now Hazard-less squad at the beginning of the season.

The Blues lost David Luiz within a breath of the season’s start—a benefit many will say, but a strong decision to make early on in Frank’s reign—and Maurizio Sarri left for Turin. The club’s undoubted best player, N’Golo Kante, was only beginning to feel his way out of and then back into chronic injuries, and the only solution was to play youth players because the team was so thin that people felt Lampard couldn’t win.

With that being the situation, it’s impossible to suggest that Lampard has not succeeded in his first season.

To finish with the team in a Champions League place, as well as in the final of the FA Cup, is an important thing to measure. People forget all of the things mentioned above and just how hard a job this one was that Lampard walked into at the beginning of the season. Think for a moment if you had to name the inarguable best player in the side besides Kante, given his injuries, at the beginning of the season; who would you have said? Willian? Jorginho? Ross Barkley? These are the names that we’re suggesting. The other sides in the division can count such players as: Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford, Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, Roberto Firmino, Mohamed Salah, Harry Kane, Pierre Emerick-Aubamaeyang, Jamie Vardy, James Maddison, and even Wilfried Zaha, among their ranks.

If Chelsea doesn’t have Kante—which it didn’t for most of the season—then the Blues don’t have a single player as good as any of those named, not a single one. That’s a wild thing to think about for Chelsea, who has—for the better part of the past 20 years—been one of the best destinations in the United Kingdom for internationally renowned footballers to earn their wages.

In and of itself, it suggests that Lampard succeeded simply by managing to finish in the Champions League, despite having possibly only the sixth best side in the division. To have done that while giving 147 total appearances to youth players in the Premier League alone is absurd.

Say what you will about the importance of youth integration; a manager’s first directive is to win. Simply giving away appearances as charity is foolish and losing, but playing youth players, is worthless. It’s just unjustifiable, glorified losing. That said, winning with a bit of heart and merit should be celebrated, and Lampard did just that.

By now, ordinarily, Chelsea would likely have been booted out of the Champions League. The Blues are only still in it because of the COVID-19 extension and that is Lampard’s only real black mark thus far. The 3-0 home loss to Bayern Munich was embarrassing. People forget that Bayern controlled the game so thoroughly that it were up 3-0 by the 76′. The German side even hit the crossbar again and should have made it 4-0—with what we’d realize later in the season would be a running theme—through an unmarked Leon Goretzka, who was subbed on because Bayern decided to start resting important players. Those important players included individuals like Thiago Alcantara, who wouldn’t have missed when it would have been easier to score.

That said, it’s not crazy to suggest it couldn’t have been expected. Munich is one of the standard-bearers for excellence in Europe. Chelsea will have learned as much from that defeat as is humanly possible because that’s what Lampard does and has multiple times this season.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times; Chelsea will be as good next season as it has been chastised in this one—and absolutely has been. 3-0 to Bayern Munich, 4-0 to Manchester United, 5-3 to Liverpool, 3-1 to Everton have all been results against the Blues this season. Each one of them followed by an improved team performance. Chelsea hasn’t been good this season, but what the Blues have done is improve in terms of their intelligence, character and build an identity for the club moving forward.

Thus, in a way, even with his black mark, Lampard manages to turn that into a victory.

I reckon it is probably the best possible case for a manager to not buy players in their first season. I’ve always wondered how much a manager would benefit by showing up to a new club and stating on the first day “I don’t want any new players, these ones should have done better”. They’d then get newly revitalized performances, earn the loyalty of the squad and get more time from ever more impatient board members, all while removing themselves from responsibility should they at least finish in a similar fashion to the previous year. That would then let them build that necessary base of character that is necessary for success and often cited with the example of Sir Alex Ferguson’s first few years at Manchester United.

Lampard walked into a very similar situation as the aforementioned. No matter what happened this season, he was going to win. The question really is to what degree he would do so. To have finished in a Champions League places is an inarguable hat-hanger. To polish it with an FA Cup, which isn’t guaranteed as Arsenal is revitalized under Mikel Arteta, would be amazing. The Champions League is, at this point, simply an extended study program in excellence from which Chelsea’s youth will benefit in studying the German giants with the outside possibility of success based off the fact that they’ve finished their season and will be bang out of form and match fitness by the time Chelsea plays them.

Finally, even the manner in which Lampard has conducted his business has been excellent—early, efficiently and decisively. Chelsea has spent too many seasons signing ‘option C’ for too much money, too late in the window—it’s why the squad has players like Danny Drinkwater and Tiemoue Bakayoko in it. That time is ending and Chelsea is on the up and up again.

It is not surprising that a man as stately and intelligent as Lampard would have done as good a job as he has. That said, it is still worth taking the time to give him credit for it. Well done to Lampard, Jody Morris and their entire backroom staff. They have done a fantastic job in turning around one of the proudest—and yet most confused clubs—in world football this season. Champagne and Russian Caviar for everyone; Keep the Blue Flag Flying High.