Chelsea: Frank Lampard has an impossible task with untrustworthy players

Chelsea’s Frank Lampard will find it difficult to find a working team when his players make elementary mistakes and leave him out to dry.

The nexus of who is to blame between the players and the manager for a team’s struggles is always an interesting one. Realistically, a manager has much less influence over a team than many like to think they do. The players, after all, have to go out and do their jobs and that has far more of a direct result on the outcome than anything the coach does. That being said, the coach does have an influence and players without a structure are bound to struggle more than usual.

This is not a “Frank Lampard got it wrong” article because he didn’t. Not against West Brom. People can quibble about Marcos Alonso starting over the unfit Ben Chilwell or the out of position Cesar Azpilicueta, but no professional should be making a mistake like he did. Beyond that, it is not as though midfield put pressure on after or Reece James didn’t get nutmegged for that goal. People can also quibble about Thiago Silva starting as captain with unknown fitness, but if his literal reason for being at Chelsea is leadership and experience, it is embarrassing to give the ball away as he did.

“Lampard got it wrong” may gain more steam given that the substitutes fixed things, but then again that is an easier narrative than “Lampard’s changes won the game”. He saw the issues Alonso and Silva were having and he pulled them off at the half. A team simply doesn’t come back from three down without the manager lighting a fire under them. 11 individuals do not simply find that collective motivation when they showed none of it a quarter of an hour before.

That simply shows the impossibility of Lampard’s task. Alonso is a known quantity, but he has not done anything so wrong in recent weeks to suggest he would make a mistake like that. Silva was great against Barnsley but in one silly moment he still cost the team a goal. Willy Caballero went from saving everything to saving nothing. The N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic pivot had worked until it very much didn’t against West Brom.

It is the same issue that Lampard had last season. A formation or player will work for a run of games. Then it simply crashes and burns. Simple mistakes that shouldn’t happen at the level of a club like Chelsea happens, and all of a sudden Lampard has to go back to the drawing board to find something that works. Something that he can trust.

Some players are better at earning that trust than others. Andreas Christensen got red just last week and he was Chelsea’s only defender against West Brom that looked like he hadn’t been on a bender. Azpilicueta rallied the team after the half as the supposedly experienced Silva wilted. Callum Hudson-Odoi, Mason Mount, and Tammy Abraham, all faced with criticism and doubts in regards to incoming players, pulled the Blues back into the game.

The players haven’t given up like they did with Jose Mourinho. They aren’t at odds with the manager like they were with Antonio Conte or Maurizio Sarri. They just simply aren’t trustworthy. A good game here, a good moment there and they earn minutes. Then they head it infield or slip a two yard pass to an opponent like they know they can never do and the Blues are behind.

Lampard has to find a consistent formation and team that works. Unfortunately, every time he seems to find one, his players let him down and he has to start over. He faces the impossible task of being a Chelsea manager with a talented squad but one so prone to errors that it may never matter that they have talent. And sadly, many fans have already decided he is holding the bag for the mistakes of others. If the players continue to let Lampard down like this, they will burn Chelsea down to the ground with him.