Window of opportunity: time for Chelsea to put a turbulent August behind them

Picture: Chelsea FC

“It’s soft, soft, soft defending. What stops that? Pure mentality. You stop it with pure mentality, defending mentality so there is no superiority for the opponent. Just toughen up as a team.” So said Thomas Tuchel in the aftermath of Chelsea’s defeat on Tuesday night at Southampton, their second loss of this already five games-old Premier League season, which has left the club languishing mid-table. And, to be honest, he was right.

On Match Of The Day, Tuchel was equally forthright: “We lose concentration, we lose our plan and lose consistency, it is too easy to beat us. We need to have answers, we need to step up and play a level higher if needed. We struggled to do this.” Crucially, he added: “It is too easy to put us off balance, to beat us, to confuse us. It is too easy. It happened against Leeds. We need to understand why and find solutions.”

Well, solutions may have arrived. Last night’s closure of the summer transfer window ended a £255 million spree, the second highest spend ever by a European football club. Into the ranks have come Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella and Wesley Fofana, along with teenagers Carney Chukwuemeka and Cesare Casadei being added to academy director Neil Bath's next-generation vision.

When the Todd Boehly/Clearlake consortium took over Chelsea it promised a sizeable fund to plug gaps, especially in defensive capabilities following the departures of Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen. It would, of course, be ridiculously naive to expect the new blood to already be producing the goods, but - the Southampton performance notwithstanding - Koulibaly and Cucurella have looked lively (but clearly still gelling with their teammates) and Sterling's brace against Leicester and Chelsea’s only goal against Southampton hinted at the goal scoring prowess of which the 27-year-old is reknown. 

However, one swallow doesn't make a summer. Until yesterday’s signing of Aubameyang, the lack of a qualified No.9 finisher and indifferent performances from Chelsea's massed ranks of attacking midfielders meant that goals were in short supply from others, including the toiling Kai Havertz - played as a sort of 9 - or the patently frustrated Christian Pulisic. The 33-year-old Aubameyang will still have to demonstrate his worth in a position that has been checkered for Chelsea over the years (and is unlikely to play straight away for his new club after he was attacked with a hammer by a burglar at his Barcelona home earlier this week).

Critics will always round on the sums of money paid by a supposed championship contender to bolster their ranks, and in Chelsea’s case, it has always been so. Ever since Roman Abramovich commenced his extravagant outlay to turn the perennial under-achievers into London’s own Galacticos, the wisdom of football’s tribality has had it that the club has simply bought the five Premier League titles, five FA Cups, the Champions League (twice) and several more trophies, at a cost of 15 different managers in the 19-year Abramovich era. But at what cost? As a season ticket holder of many years standing, I’ve benefitted from all the glory, but can’t help feeling that Chelsea have also fuelled the inflationary player market. As we’ve seen again this summer, when Chelsea come knocking, a player’s value seems to go up by at least another £10 million. How else does the relatively untried 21-year-old Fofana move to Chelsea from Leicester for an eye-watering £70 million-plus add-ons?

Todd Boehly and Wes Fofana
Picture: Chelsea FC

Time will tell as to whether this summer’s intake will make a difference. The brief, at the end of last season, was that Chelsea need to close the 20-point gap on Liverpool and Manchester City. Five games in, that looks extremely unlikely. In mitigation, this has been a somewhat fraught summer for the club. 2021-22 ended with the existential threat of the club disappearing altogether, following the UK government sanctions on Abramovich forcing him to sell up. The Boehly-Clearlake takeover took an uneasily long time to close, which meant a frantic few weeks to reorganise everything from the club website to Stamford Bridge stadium staff, as well as start their summer transfer business. A short summer, with the new season starting even earlier due to UEFA’s ludicrous World Cup in Qatar, has added to the pressures on Tuchel to hit the ground running, with both new players and a squad featuring several players looking for a move away.

There is certainly substance to Tuchel’s comments about mentality. But while there have been myriad conditions mitigating the club this summer, none of the players at the club already or newly joined are under-rewarded. That, of course, is assuming that a modern Premier League player’s psychology is purely underpinned by their wage packets and what colour Lamborghini they want to buy next. Clearly, though, there have been some fragile egos at play. For example, it will be interesting to see how Hakim Zyech performs, now that he hasn’t returned to Ajax, or that Pulisic hasn’t found somewhere else to ply his alleged wingcraft. Marcus Alonso has, thankfully, finally been off-loaded to Barcelona as a makeweight in the Aubameyang deal, which will hopefully be one less disinterested influence in the dressing room.

Picturre: Chelsea FC

Hopefully, then, the “distractions” (Tuchel’s word) of the transfer window are now behind Chelsea and they can knuckle down to the business of closing that gap with City and Liverpool. Much expectation will fall on the shoulders of Aubameyang, but given that he’s following in the footsteps of Romelu Lukaku, Fernando Torres, Gonzalo Higuain, Alvaro Morata, Radamel Falcao and even Andrei Schevchenko - with the exception of Didier Drogba, the centre forward role at Chelsea may well be cursed. In truth, though, while that position might attract all the attention, it’s elswhere that Tuchel must apply himself. 

When he took over from Frank Lampard, Tuchel rebuilt from the back, addressing defensive frailty. The job now is to find the right formation, figuring out how best to use a good pool of defenders, including newcomers Koulibaly, Cucurella, the established old heads of Thiago Silva and Cesar Azpiliqueta, and wingbacks Reece James and Ben Chillwell. Midfield still presents a challenge. On paper, N’Golo Kante, Jorginho and Mateo Kovacic should be ipregnable holding players, but injuries have blighted the position. The arrival of Juve’s Denis Zakaria on loan might make the role more dynamic. Moving upfield, Chelsea’s attack has looked anaemic in the opening games of the season. Sterling aside, others, like Havertz, Zyech, Pulisic and even the saintly Mason Mount have simply not been delivering.

Tuchel is right in saying that Chelsea’s problems have been mental rather than physical, but in itself, the mental challenge now is for the head coach himself to impose his will on team psychology. They need to play less predictably and with greater resilience. And that starts tomorrow with the visit to Stamford Bridge from West Ham.

No pressure, then: the season ahead for Frank Lampard

If you’ve been hearing the noise of a chequebook creaking open and shut from Moscow, Tel Aviv, a Moonraker-style space station, or wherever Roman Abramovich bases himself these days, it’s because the Russian has made a spectacular return to the largesse that transformed Chelsea 17 years ago. The oligarch can be pretty much singularly credited for transforming the club from perennial strugglers, trading off former glories and lurching from existential crisis to existential crisis, into serial trophy winners and default members of the so-called ‘big six’.

Whatever the arguments about "buying success" (yeah, tell that to Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSG and, for a long period of time, Manchester United...), the outlay that marked Abramovich's first decade or so as Chelsea's owner made a notable disappearance as he appeared to lose interest, apparently the result of Britain having a downer on friends of the Russian regime. An abrupt halt was called to the redevelopment of Stamford Bridge amid suggestions (denied) that an application to renew Abramovich's 'investor visa' had been withdrawn. Even the oligarch himself was rumoured to be sounding out potential suitors for the club, though this proved to be nothing more than rumour. The club's spending profile did, though, appear more muted, to be curbed further by the UEFA ban on signing new players that took effect at the beginning of last season, just as Frank Lampard took over as head coach of the club where he is, rightfully, revered as a playing legend.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

You could say that Lampard, in only his second management role after just a single season at Derby County, was taking on the notoriously trepidatious Chelsea gig with one hand tied behind his back and both ankles strapped together.

His maiden season meant blooding in a talented pool of youngsters that had, hitherto, been out on a never-ending carousel of loans, along with somewhat ageing figures that, if push came to shove, would have been surplus to requirements. On top of that, he’d be shorn of the club talisman, Eden Hazard, sold to Real Madrid at the end of the season before. Given all this, a fourth place finish, resulting in Champions League qualification, plus an appearance in the FA Cup Final, could be seen as over-achievement.

In fact, at any other club it would be. But this is Chelsea. Even for a season that ended better than anyone gave Lampard credit for (most would have generously said “top ten” and left it at that), the club’s expectations of their young manager were still left unfulfilled, according to some suggestions. Luckily, Lampard spent 13 years at the club as a player, and saw plenty of managers come and go, including the revered Carlo Ancelotti, always believed to be the model coach Abramovich desired when he bought the club.

So, no pressure, then, on Lampard for his own sophomore season. Especially when the club has become the Premier League's most vibrantly active club in the summer transfer market, so far spending anything up to £230 million on exciting European talent. Kai Havertz (21), Timo Werner (24), Hakim Ziyech (27), plus Ben Chilwell (23), the veteran Thiago Silva and, we understand, the imminent arrival of goalkeeper Edouard Mendy, have all been acquired to augment a side that, last season, showed plenty of attack but lacked robustness at the back.

Hakim Ziyech and Ben Chilwell
Picture: Twitter/@ChelseaFC

There is still the possibility, too, that Declan Rice - a Chelsea academy product - might be prised away from West Ham, though not if David Moyes has his say, having slapped a £90 million sprig of garlic around the versatile centre-back’s neck. Given that Chelsea’s net outlay is 'only' £80 million in this window, due to the fact Hazard’s residual fee will eventually reach £150 million, Rice might still prove an irresistible target for Marina Granovskaia’s impressively administered kitty.

The need to strengthen Chelsea’s squad hasn’t simply been to plug the obvious defensive gaps that could, last season, have undermined things more seriously. While 2019-20 was accepted as a fallow year, given the ban and an accommodation around the youth/ageing contingent, a gulf opened up with Liverpool and, to a lesser extent, Manchester City, the latter of whom enjoy a similar lap of benefactor luxury. This time around, Manchester United continue to be a threat - perhaps more than they did last season - and Arsenal under Mikel Arteta are growing in stature, buoyed by titles acquired at both ends of August. And there is still Tottenham, but let's just leave that there for now.

Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp may have recently dismissed Chelsea’s summer spending, but the reopening of the Abramovich coffers has allowed the club to remain supremely competitive in the attacking department. Havertz is one of Europe’s hottest properties - coveted, apparently, by both Liverpool and City - and accordingly didn’t come cheap, especially at a time when most clubs have reigned in spending. Chelsea have appeared to remain in relatively good fiscal health throughout the last few months, apparently not having to make any redundancies or even (from what I hear) furloughs due to the pandemic. Even the season ticket situation remains up in the air for 2020-21 renewals (we’re still in credit for the games closed off to spectators since March). Normally they can't wait to send out the renewal notice in May. All of this doesn’t mean the largesse hasn't come at a price. There are still surplus players for Granovskaia to offload in order to reduce a wage bill that represented almost two-thirds of the club’s 2019 turnover. And that challenge will potentially include finding a home for the arguably toxic and decidedly pricey Kepa Arrizabalaga.

As Chelsea’s season kicks off, properly, tonight at Brighton, there's no guarantee that the new crop will inject last term's missing ingredients, but from the outset, they certainly look like an exciting set of additions. Lampard’s challenge is to make them gel, to fit an effective system and then ensure none of the home-grown products who stepped into the breach last time are alienated. There’s no doubt that in Havertz, Ziyech and Werner, significant competition has been provided for Mason Mount, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham, the serial loanees returned to the fold by Lampard, with only the pre-ban signing Christian Pulisic to augment things. On balance, they all did well, but they still enjoyed something of a free ride without a vast amount of hard challenging from within the squad. Fresh challengers will only do them good, as long as ambitious agent-fathers/brothers/uncles don’t start agitating via the tabloid back pages.

While attention will inevitably fall on the exciting array of attackers now at Lampard's disposal, scrutiny will not ease on the defensive shape that collectively shipped 79 goals in all competitions last season. The arrival of Silva’s experience and Chilwell’s much-needed left-back capabilities will shore things up (and Rice would be a compelling addition to either defence or the base of midfield), but Lampard will also need to settle on a line-up that went through endless permutations, with eight different defenders starting in ten matches or more last season. There will need to be further maturing, too, of Reece James and, if he isn’t loaned out to Everton, Fikayo Tomori, both exciting talents but with some development still do be done.

Picture: Facebook/Chelsea FC

Taking the bigger picture, Lampard is, at 42, in an incredible position. He probably has more leeway than most Chelsea managers - though only just - and as long as Abramovich and Granovskaia let him get on with shaping a squad of undoubted youthful talent, the prospect of giving Liverpool and City a run for their money is high. Lampard, former Chelsea winger Pat Nevin said recently, isn’t just building a team, but “a dynasty”. Quite a bold claim. "If you equalise [the outlay] over the two years, it's not a mad amount of money with the income from Hazard and Morata [Alvaro, a £58 million distress sale to Atlético Madrid],” Nevin told the BBC. “Also, Chelsea weren't expected to reach the Champions League two seasons in a row, which makes a massive difference to their finances."

In Granovskaia, Chelsea have a shrewd businesswoman. The £71 million paid for Havertz could be realised tremendously, much as Hazard was, bought for £32 million and whose sale to Real Madrid made four times that amount. Lampard, though, won’t be looking at his squad of young talents as lucrative investments to be harvested. He’ll be focused on one thing: not getting sacked. There’s no immediate suggestion that he is in the firing line, but Abramovich, lets face it, has form. Last season’s fourth spot, Champions League football secured and a cup final appearance will never be enough for the Chelsea owner.

The conventional wisdom, then, is that Lampard’s backing by the club’s supporters, as well as his legacy in blue, would make him harder to sack than any of the predecessors strewn along the way by Abramovich. But the Russian hasn’t shelled out £200 million-plus in recent weeks without expecting an immediate return, and football results - arguably more than even financial results - are what he craves the most.

Keeping it real: Chelsea's season in review

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

If you wanted an encapsulation of Chelsea’s season, rewatch last Wednesday’s 5-3 defeat at Anfield. Because there, in 90 blood pressure-baiting minutes, we saw the best of Frank Lampard’s side and easily its worst. Simply stated, this is a team blessed with attacking potential - and that will only get better with the incoming summer signings - but, to be fair, lacking some defensive integrity. The stats don't lie: Chelsea have ended the season in fourth place - it could have been third - but have conceded more goals than any other team in the top half of the Premier League.

One nagging concern about Lampard's tenure at Derby County last season was the defensive side of his and assistant head coach Jody Morris's game, and you could easily surmise that to be a blind spot that followed the duo "home" to Chelsea. The Liverpool game certainly placed it into sharp perspective, conceding five goals - some relatively cheaply - while scoring three through decent opportunities (and from those contracted to do so: Giroud, Abraham and Pulisic). From a neutral's point of view, a 5-3 encounter between the champions-elect and a top-four team, at the arse-end of this of all seasons, must have been fun to watch, especially with the irritating pyrotechnics erupting from addresses in the L4 postal area. But if Lampard was making mental notes, as he agitatedly prowled the technical area, he should have been only underlining pre-existing observations of issues with his side that have been patently clear all season long. Namely, the defence. Or, more fairly, 'defence', without the definite article.

Keita's stunning opener for Liverpool was the result of a wayward half-clearance by Willian inside his own half, in a position that should have been occupied by a midfielder or wingback, or N'Golo Kante, had he been fit. Avoidable, then. Liverpool's second came about after Mateo Kovicic was unfairly judged to have fouled Mane, allowing Alexander-Arnold to curl in one of his set piece specials from the free kick. Even before he'd taken his run up, Chelsea's Kepa Arrizabalaga was leaving oceans of space to his left on the goal line, so much space, the crew of the International Space Station could have looked out of a porthole and concluded: "He's going to pop that one in, top-right corner". Which he did. Avoidable. Five minutes later, another set-piece (an Alexander-Arnold corner), Chelsea fail to clear and Wijnaldum has the ball in the roof of the net from 12 yards. Avoidable.

None of this ignores the quality Liverpool displayed - and have displayed all season long - as they marched towards their first ever Premier League trophy (as opposed to the five for Chelsea...). Lampard, and his underlings and club hierarchy, would do well to look at how Jurgen Klopp's side have done it. If they have any hope of matching the Merseysiders next season, the prescription during what little close season exists before everything kicks off again on 12 September needs to be rich. Kepa Arrizabalaga, despite being the world's most expensive goalkeeper, has become increasingly unfit for purpose. His rooted-to-the-line stance and absence of stature invited Alexander-Arnold to give it a go last Wednesday night, and paid the price. But it would be wrong to pin the blame solely on the Spaniard with the job-descriptive first name. Chelsea need greater imperiousness at the back.

Various defensive combinations have been tried throughout the season but none have proven definitive. Antonio Rüdiger and Kurt Zouma may have played themselves into contention as the central defensive pairing, but neither have always given the confidence that they have anything like the symbiotic relationship once seen in blue with John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho, or even Terry and Gary Cahill. Captain César Azpilicueta is still a decent defender, and the fact he's been played out left as well as right shows just what is missing out left. Marcos Alonso is somewhat lacking in both pace or awareness in the wingback role, and Emerson Palmieri doesn't provide anywhere near the competition for that place he should do. Out right, Chelsea have options, including the promising Reece James, but even he's learning, and for all his genuine muscular ability, can sometimes have lapses of concentration. In front of the backline, Lampard has been forced to play Jorginho instead of the injured Kante in the closing stages of the season, but even the Brazilian-born Italian blows hot and cold as to his effectiveness.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

There’s no doubt that Lampard is building something at Chelsea. He is, after all, still only in his first season as head coach at the club and only in his second in management, altogether. He also came into the season with one of the club's hands tied behind its back, as the UEFA ban forced Lampard into fielding talented, home-grown youngsters. The loss of Eden Hazard didn't help, either. However, football is unforgiving, and Roman Abramovich even less so. The oligarch will, of course, be somewhat more sympathetic towards Lampard, not least of which because he saw the former Chelsea No.8 lift trophy after trophy during the better part of his 12 seasons as a player. There will, too, be some leniency over the fact that Lampard hasn’t, yet, been able to fully stamp his mark on the club. Expectation, then, will be high on how he integrates the inbound Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner and, potentially, nabs Leverkusen’s Kai Havertz, who is apparently keen to move. Attacking creativity is already not in short supply - Christian Pulicic has given some glimpses of late as to what he can do, even with the heavy load of Hazard’s shadow hanging over him. Clearly, a refresh in the forward mix can only be a good thing, but realistically, that’s not where the money needs to be spent. It would be nice to think that Marina Granovskaia, keeper of the Roman chequebook, knows this too. If Havertz is the missing piece of the creative puzzle, wholesale changes at the back are needed.

I wouldn’t normally expound much time on anything Jamie Carragher has to say about Chelsea (let’s just say, there’s been form between us over the years), but his assessment after the Liverpool encounter was spot on: "Chelsea won’t go any further unless they change their goalkeeper,” he told Sky Sports, adding: “You see a lot of centre halves at Chelsea without seeing one really outstanding one, those are the areas that if they are going to challenge Liverpool and Man City they’ll have to rectify in the summer. They are the worst team in the league defending corners. This is a massive problem for Chelsea. Yes Werner is coming in and [Ziyech], there is talk of Havertz as well. It sounds great and it gets supporters excited but it means nothing if you don’t sort out that back three and certainly that goalkeeper."

No surprise, then, that Lampard resigned Arrizabalaga against Wolves in their Premier League season finale. Pundit and fan concerns about the keeper's justification have been compounded this season. Against Wolves, the dependable Willy Caballero did everything he was called upon to do, but at 38, the Argentine can't be considered the long-term solution for the goalkeeping position. Kepa's not a bad keeper, but his discipline and decision making let him down too often.

All that’s left of the season, then, is the FA Cup Final on Saturday against Arsenal - another storied fixture between the clubs, though neither are quite at the level of previous encounters between them. And then, there’s the somewhat weird notion of a Champions League Final 16 meeting on 8 August with the mighty Bayern Munich, something of a dead rubber, given that Chelsea head to Bavaria 3-0 down on aggregate. Chelsea have had plenty of these fixtures in recent years - famously winning the Champions League itself in 2012 at the Allianz Arena by beating the host home side. This time around, it’s a different encounter, especially given that this early in August would see both sides in the midst of pre-season friendlies. The first leg at Stamford Bridge, however, proved an education for Lampard, highlighting the gap between his side of mostly youngsters and a Munich consisting of players in their prime and at their prime. Chelsea could still pull off a shock, as they did in 2012, but overturning a 3-0 deficit against the Germans would be something of an unlikely outcome, even in this somewhat unlikely term.

In some ways, Lampard couldn’t have enjoyed an easier nursery slope on which to try out his management skills, an even more benevolent situation given how many of his predecessors have not been afforded such freedom. The 2020-21 season will be a whole different affair, and the likeable 42-year-old may face more challenging scrutiny. But, put into perspective, an FA Cup Final, a last-16 place in the Champions League, and fourth place in the Premier League is, by anyone’s standards, not bad. The thing is, Chelsea managers are rarely held up to “anyone’s standards”.