Sheffield United 2 Chelsea 2

[chara]

Watching two Euro Quarter Final games (Citeh and Barca) the huge gap between the preparation and group performances (and individual) was in stark..and embarrassing..contrast to the way Chelsea perform on the pitch,,,from organised understanding pretty much everywhere across the games to the chaos theory which seems to sum up the Chelsea "plan" and coaching 'philosophy.

Wilder "outcoached" (A big Sam quote?) The Poch or rather Wilder set up and directed his side better on the day regardless of the fact basically Chelsea have a "better squad"' despite the weaknesses well documented and understood by everyone.

This was a win game there for Chelsea to lose....which they nearly did

The Poch out,,eventually..for me,,a mediocre coach and not a coach able to lead any side above the also ran spots on a regular basis...at least..to my mind..Potter was useless...The Poch is just ordinary at best which is far more destructive in the long run.

[Miguelito07]

1 hour ago, chara said:

The Poch is just ordinary at best which is far more destructive in the long run.

Yep.

I think the Poch we currently have is the one which Spuds fans were desperate to get rid off at the end of his tenure at Spuds...

[NoblyBobly]

On 09/04/2024 at 14:04, paulw66 said:

So, you're arguing against the spending splurge of summer 2020, not the sacking of Lampard in January 2021.

That's a different argument to the one I made. 

They were "fortunate" to get 4th because we were languishing in 9th when SFL got the sack.

SFL - 29 points from 19

TT - 38 from 19

TT got a 31% improvement from the same players, plus won the CL. You can believe sacking SFL was wrong if you like. 

It's an assumption that if asked Margot Robbie out, she'd say no, but you never know.

He "deserved to finish what he started".......why? We were playing terribly and the wheels had come off. Sounds like pure sentiment. 

 

and Lampard has????? 

Gets more bizarre. in what way am I doing that? All I said was that the group of players we had then were good enough to win it, and the sacking of SFL was correct.

You keep arguing against points I haven't made, it's weird. 

You can make this complicated if you like and start throwing stats and percentages around. You can say Lampard was lucky to get fourth if you like , but imo that is being ungrateful and mean spirited to a rookie coach that had lost our star player in hazard and was working with a transfer ban. Without that top 4 there was no CL trophy the next season…and that is an absolute fact. 
So in case I’ve confused you , this is my opinion of what the club should have done. It’s not hindsight because I said it at the time. 
Keep that young team. It suited Lampard and it suited Chelsea. They liked Lampard (and Jodie) and respected them. At times they were a joy to watch.  It was also great for our image as a club and was attracting news fans and plaudits from angles I’d never expected. 
We needed another keeper and maybe one or two upgrades. The 5 or 6 big additions was too much too soon, especially for a rookie coach like Lampard. And the expectations was that those players would make us title contenders. We now know they weren’t good enough for that. And probably neither was Lampard . But then neither were all the subsequent coaches we’ve hired. 
So here we are 3/4 years later. Mid table, losing to just about any team that’s up for it, being called billion pound bottle jobs, on the verge of a points deductions and probably being forced to sell Connor ( a Chelsea lad through and through) to balance the books. Maybe you like the path that led us here.  
Maybe you think that CL was worth it. I actually don’t because we’ve lost our soul. 

[chara]

1 hour ago, NoblyBobly said:

You can make this complicated if you like and start throwing stats and percentages around. You can say Lampard was lucky to get fourth if you like , but imo that is being ungrateful and mean spirited to a rookie coach that had lost our star player in hazard and was working with a transfer ban. Without that top 4 there was no CL trophy the next season…and that is an absolute fact. 
So in case I’ve confused you , this is my opinion of what the club should have done. It’s not hindsight because I said it at the time. 
Keep that young team. It suited Lampard and it suited Chelsea. They liked Lampard (and Jodie) and respected them. At times they were a joy to watch.  It was also great for our image as a club and was attracting news fans and plaudits from angles I’d never expected. 
We needed another keeper and maybe one or two upgrades. The 5 or 6 big additions was too much too soon, especially for a rookie coach like Lampard. And the expectations was that those players would make us title contenders. We now know they weren’t good enough for that. And probably neither was Lampard . But then neither were all the subsequent coaches we’ve hired. 
So here we are 3/4 years later. Mid table, losing to just about any team that’s up for it, being called billion pound bottle jobs, on the verge of a points deductions and probably being forced to sell Connor ( a Chelsea lad through and through) to balance the books. Maybe you like the path that led us here.  
Maybe you think that CL was worth it. I actually don’t because we’ve lost our soul. 

@NoblyBobly.....A True Chelsea Voice.

[Max Fowler]

10 hours ago, NoblyBobly said:

You can make this complicated if you like and start throwing stats and percentages around. You can say Lampard was lucky to get fourth if you like , but imo that is being ungrateful and mean spirited to a rookie coach that had lost our star player in hazard and was working with a transfer ban. Without that top 4 there was no CL trophy the next season…and that is an absolute fact. 
So in case I’ve confused you , this is my opinion of what the club should have done. It’s not hindsight because I said it at the time. 
Keep that young team. It suited Lampard and it suited Chelsea. They liked Lampard (and Jodie) and respected them. At times they were a joy to watch.  It was also great for our image as a club and was attracting news fans and plaudits from angles I’d never expected. 
We needed another keeper and maybe one or two upgrades. The 5 or 6 big additions was too much too soon, especially for a rookie coach like Lampard. And the expectations was that those players would make us title contenders. We now know they weren’t good enough for that. And probably neither was Lampard . But then neither were all the subsequent coaches we’ve hired. 
So here we are 3/4 years later. Mid table, losing to just about any team that’s up for it, being called billion pound bottle jobs, on the verge of a points deductions and probably being forced to sell Connor ( a Chelsea lad through and through) to balance the books. Maybe you like the path that led us here.  
Maybe you think that CL was worth it. I actually don’t because we’ve lost our soul. 

I'm sorry Bobbly - we're not where we are now because we sacked SFL. We're where we are because Roman was forced to sell and we were bought by Clearlake.

Those events were completely unconnected to us sacking Lamps.

[NoblyBobly]

1 hour ago, Max Fowler said:

I'm sorry Bobbly - we're not where we are now because we sacked SFL. We're where we are because Roman was forced to sell and we were bought by Clearlake.

Those events were completely unconnected to us sacking Lamps.

Of course forcing us to get rid of Roman was devastating. We lost a fantastic owner…we are lucky to still have a club . But Roman wiped off ALL THE DEBT and asked for none of financial input back.  We started with a clean slate if you will. That is absolutely nothing to do with the Lampard saga. I’m not even suggesting he shouldn’t have been sacked. We the got the manager bounce from TT that we needed but it did us no good long term did it? People can keep repeating the mantra “ well we won the CL “ but once you are in the knockout stages, ‘with a favourable wind and if the creek don’t rise’ ,  literally any coach can win the CL …Tuchel, Lampard, RDM, Abram Grant, even Poch. We weren’t the best team in Europe. We weren’t even the best team in England.  We probably weren’t in 2012. But we probably were under Mourinho mark 1. 
TT was sacked when league results went the same way as Lampards. Potter was sacked when his results went the same way as TTs. Poch will be sacked  because his results were no better than Potters. 
The common denominator here is that we have overpaid  hugely for average players. And now we are in a position of points deduction if we don’t sell key players. So how are we supposed to bolster our strike force now if we have no money to spend. Is Jackson our striker for the next 3 years?  If we get a 10 point deduction we could be fighting relegation. 
So let me take you back Max to a happier place, back to 2020. We had a transfer ban. We had a rookie coach that was very familiar with our young kids . They were our ‘class of 92’. Not since JT had we had academy players deserving of a first team place….and we had 6 or 7 of them.  Under Lampard they seemed to gel with our more experienced players. They played with energy, enthusiasm and had a pride in the Chelsea badge. They helped to get us 4th place ( a far away dream today) . They would have won the FA cup had a ref not robbed us in the final. 
So here’s the big choice ( with benefit of hindsight if you like). Do we-

A)  Ask Lampard what he needs within a modest budget ( Silva on a free and Mendy for 20mill perhaps, Chilwell perhaps) , give him the baton and let him give it a crack for another season . 
OR

B) Push that young team to one side, spend  £230 mill on the likes of Havertz , Werner, Zyech and Co ,bloat the squad and  expect Lamps to push for the title. And bear in mind covid restrictions did not help a bunch of foreign players fit in easy or comfortably. 

Those are your choices Max … A or B . Now you tell me. 
And for folks who like percentages , even with that bad second season , Lampards win rate was over 50% . 
So what you gonna go for? ( you have a Time Machine). 

 

[NoblyBobly]

And it’s interesting to have a look at the subsequent careers of Zyech , Werner and Havertz . These were the 3 wise monkeys that were going to be the dynamic expensive forward line bought to help Lampard  and Chelsea push for the title.  If Werner had buried 50% of the absolute sitters he missed , those goals alone might have been enough to save Lampard. So it’s not so much goal stats but chances wasted with him. Nevertheless his stats were and are shocking.  In 56 PL games for us he scored  10 goals. Less than one in five.  So far for Spurs he has 2 in 12. That’s about his level. 
Now to Zeyech. In 64 PL games for us he scored  6 goals. Shocking. 
Best of the trio was Havertz ( but still pretty shite for a forward) . In 92 Chelsea PL games he scored 19 goals. A goal every 4 or 5 games.  For Arsenal ( a team pushing for the title)  he has got 9 goals in 31 PL games . If you factor in 12 cup and CL games it goes from one in three to one in four. Bang average to poor for Lampard, TT ,  Potter and Arteta.
Obviously subsequent purchases have been equally as poor but it’s worth reminding ourselves when the rot set in.  2020/2021. 
 

[paulw66]

On 14/04/2024 at 21:43, NoblyBobly said:

You can make this complicated if you like and start throwing stats and percentages around. You can say Lampard was lucky to get fourth if you like , but imo that is being ungrateful and mean spirited to a rookie coach that had lost our star player in hazard and was working with a transfer ban. Without that top 4 there was no CL trophy the next season…and that is an absolute fact. 
So in case I’ve confused you , this is my opinion of what the club should have done. It’s not hindsight because I said it at the time. 
Keep that young team. It suited Lampard and it suited Chelsea. They liked Lampard (and Jodie) and respected them. At times they were a joy to watch.  It was also great for our image as a club and was attracting news fans and plaudits from angles I’d never expected. 
We needed another keeper and maybe one or two upgrades. The 5 or 6 big additions was too much too soon, especially for a rookie coach like Lampard. And the expectations was that those players would make us title contenders. We now know they weren’t good enough for that. And probably neither was Lampard . But then neither were all the subsequent coaches we’ve hired. 
So here we are 3/4 years later. Mid table, losing to just about any team that’s up for it, being called billion pound bottle jobs, on the verge of a points deductions and probably being forced to sell Connor ( a Chelsea lad through and through) to balance the books. Maybe you like the path that led us here.  
Maybe you think that CL was worth it. I actually don’t because we’ve lost our soul. 

It's so strange 

 

You keep quoting me against things I havent said,  so the whole thing falls down

[NoblyBobly]

15 hours ago, paulw66 said:

It's so strange 

 

You keep quoting me against things I havent said,  so the whole thing falls down

Nothing is really that strange. If I’ve misread or misinterpreted something you said , then it happens and I apologise. 
But I think I get the gist of what your opinion is ( sack Lampard because he wasn’t good enough regardless of the players he had been given) and I think you get the gist of my opinion- (Lampard was given over rated players with unrealistic expectations and he and the club would have been wise to leave the squad much as it was in the previous season). 
Now we can go get into the weeds with those two opinions because both have validity. What I’d appreciate Paul is a bit less of the “you’re being weird and strange”. 

[paulw66]

8 minutes ago, NoblyBobly said:

Nothing is really that strange. If I’ve misread or misinterpreted something you said , then it happens and I apologise. 
But I think I get the gist of what your opinion is ( sack Lampard because he wasn’t good enough regardless of the players he had been given) and I think you get the gist of my opinion- (Lampard was given over rated players with unrealistic expectations and he and the club would have been wise to leave the squad much as it was in the previous season). 
Now we can go get into the weeds with those two opinions because both have validity. What I’d appreciate Paul is a bit less of the “you’re being weird and strange”. 

This whole back and forth started when you implied sacking Lampard was a mistake (January 2021), and when I countered that argument, you started talking about the transfer policy of summer 2020, which is a completely  different argument.

The transfers of that summer in 2020 were at best, a mixed bag, I agree, but at the same token, Lampard was not getting the best of squad he then had at his disposal. This was clearly illustrated in the up turn in points per game achieved by the bloke who replaced him. 

I am not calling you weird or strange. What is strange is arguing against a point I didn't make. Example:

 

On 14/04/2024 at 21:43, NoblyBobly said:

. You can say Lampard was lucky to get fourth if you like , but imo that is being ungrateful and mean spirited to a rookie coach that had lost our star player in hazard and was working with a transfer ban.

When did I say that? I didn't! 

 

On 14/04/2024 at 21:43, NoblyBobly said:

You can make this complicated if you like and start throwing stats and percentages around. 

I am making it complicated but quoting facts, you mean? 

 

[NoblyBobly]

11 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

This whole back and forth started when you implied sacking Lampard was a mistake (January 2021), and when I countered that argument, you started talking about the transfer policy of summer 2020, which is a completely  different argument.

It is not a different argument at all , and the fact that i cannot make you see that is not really my problem. Firstly, it wasn't totally about Lampard it was about the purchasing of a whole bunch of players who mostly failed. They failed for Lampard, they failed Tuchel (he got the sack the same as Lampard because the league is what matters as a true test of level ) and they failed  Potter (he got the sack the too).  You call them a mixed bag which is extremely generous. They were expensive and over rated in my opinion. 

Now lets go back to Lampard.  I would have preferred if we had not splurged 280 mill on those players but rather gone with what we had with a couple of useful additions such as Mendy, Silva, Chilwell (combined fee of 70 mill?) . I have no crystal ball. I cannot definitively tell you what would have happened if we had gone down that route. Maybe Lampard would have been sacked sooner, Maybe he would have been given another season with less expectation. Maybe he would still be here...I DON'T KNOW! but I do know that I would have preferred to see if those academy players were trusted another season, preferably under Lampard , but if we got a better coach to bring those kids on then I would also not be unhappy. I'm sorry if you find that weird, strange or bizarre.

47 minutes ago, paulw66 said:

When did I say that? I didn't! 

I already said in my last post that if I misread or misunderstood something you then i apologise. Maybe i didn't have my glasses on. Maybe I was skirted over a paragraph too quick. Have you ever done that?  I'm not going to keep apologising about a misunderstanding on who was lucky to finish fourth because it has little to do with the wider point. However its noted that the apology is not accepted. I'm sure you'd like my whole argument to come crashing down on the basis of a pretty irrelevant point. Lampard and Tuchel both got top 4 on merit (better? ). 

 

1 hour ago, paulw66 said:

I am making it complicated but quoting facts, you mean? 

 

We can all quote stat facts and pick some that make our argument look better. For instance Avram Grant had the best win rate of any Chelsea coach at 67% (fact!) . Is he the best ever Chelsea coach? He's miles above Tuchel (56%) and Lampard (52%). Tuchel and Lampards of course are more comparable because they had a similar set of players. But unless you can give me the stat of Lampards win percentage and table position if he had been left with his academy project with a few additions, it's not going to cut much ice with me.  And its not even about table position its about the direction the club wanted to go in. .. buy lots of expensive players or trust in the youth. Here's another stat fact . When Lampard was sacked we were 9th, last season we finished 12th, now we are 9th. What does that fact prove? nothing really except we have fallen from where we once were . None of us are particularly happy (despite the afterglow of a 6-0 win)  and I suppose that is a fact worth noting. 

.  

[chara]

Hmm...I rarely take sides and don't mean to now but I didn't think..and still don't ...that SFL was such a terrible coach...forget the "interim" basically favour he did...

A good first season with big restrictions and a young Academy influenced side I believe we all identified with,

The three BIG signings turned out to be big in parts and I don't think I'm overreaching to say ultimately all three were underwhelming in their long term benefit to Chelsea and Lamps...that's not to say they didn't have "moments" but movements are just that,,,not week in weekout game/team influence as one would expect/hope for.

I am not defending SFL  and strictly on stats and the eyes he was not successful but compared to GP?...looking at the tables now it sort of shows things in a different light,

[NoblyBobly]

3 hours ago, chara said:

Hmm...I rarely take sides and don't mean to now but I didn't think..and still don't ...that SFL was such a terrible coach...forget the "interim" basically favour he did...

A good first season with big restrictions and a young Academy influenced side I believe we all identified with,

The three BIG signings turned out to be big in parts and I don't think I'm overreaching to say ultimately all three were underwhelming in their long term benefit to Chelsea and Lamps...that's not to say they didn't have "moments" but movements are just that,,,not week in weekout game/team influence as one would expect/hope for.

I am not defending SFL  and strictly on stats and the eyes he was not successful but compared to GP?...looking at the tables now it sort of shows things in a different light,

He was certainly the right man at that moment . What got difficult for him  ( as I have tried to articulate) is that some of those  those big signings ( let’s name and shame) Werner , Zeyech and Havertz were thrusted upon Lampard with an expectation to play them or else.
If Lampard had been a big coach with lots of experience and confidence ( let’s say a Mourinho) he would have told the owner” fuck it…Zeyech is lazy good for nothing and Werner can’t hit a cows arse with a banjo. Havertz has clearly got long COVID so they are on the bench. “ But Lampard appeared to get caught in the headlights . He particularly refused to budge from a back four. The first thing Tuchel did was go to a back three and it immediately improved things. 
My big regret is that Roman didn’t let Lamps continue with the stumbled upon project. And I say that because that opportunity will never present itself again. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to stick two fingers up at our critics who claimed we did nothing but buy success. We had the  highly unusual combination of a transfer ban, a bunch of the most  promising academy kids we’ve ever had ( totally ignored by Sarri) but now a new young coach ( who knew them well) in a great position to blood them in the top flight. Lampard gave no less than 8 academy kids their debut. Not all cut the mustard but he wanted to have a look at them and give them a chance. Mount and James were obviously the stand out pair from the academy but others such as Gilmour , Tomorri, Lampty Tammy A , CHO were all very decent and proved they could hold their own with the big boys. They needed experience around them and we had a bit of that too. For me it will forever be an opportunity lost. It may not have worked but we will never know….but  I’m telling you, top 4 was an absolute outstanding achievement for Lampard. I could never understand people like Droy constantly trying to knock the achievement and pick holes in whatever Lampard did, even in season one. He got them playing like a team , he was great with the media and from a personal perspective I was enjoying being a Chelsea fan. 
winning the CL again was fab but apart from that the last 4 years have quite distressing.  And I can tell you, we are fighting a points deduction.  Chelsea apparently did some “creative accounting” to balance our books,  by selling one of our hotels for 76 mill to another company owned by Chelsea.  If the PL decided that was a crooked manoeuvre we are toast. And qualifying for Europe is only going to make things worse. 
No point looking back I suppose because what’s done is done. We are where we are , but where we are ain’t great.