New Year, new thinking, old problem

Picture: Sky Sports

So I start 2023 with a post about football. Sorry if you were expecting something erudite about rock and roll, but there’s plenty of that in the pipeline, I assure you. It’s just that things need to be said about my football club. And being a Monday, home of the occasional ‘Monday Moan’ (see posts passim), it might as well be now, even if today is only the second day of the new year.

There was hope that the World Cup, which ate through most of the final six weeks of the old year, would allow Graham Potter time to figure out what wasn’t happening at Chelsea. Prior to last Tuesday’s restorative 2-0 win over Bournemouth, the club had suffered three straight defeats in its previous Premier League outings, running up to the tournament in Qatar. Potter had said that he would use the international break to get his head around why. In fairness, it was probably the first opportunity he’d had to fully get under the skin of the team he’d been somewhat parachuted into following Thomas Tuchel’s abrupt sacking in September, barely a month into the new season. That meant Potter had a steep curve to attain, even if it was softened by conciliatory noises from Chelsea’s new owners about a “project” that would give him time. 

The Bournemouth result, which saw goals from Kai Havertz and Mason Mount, with Raheem Sterling displaying a contributory form that he’d barely shown since his summer move from Manchester City, gave some hope that Potter’s pledge before the game, that improvement was coming, would ring true. “We’ve had a challenging time, some ups, some downs, in terms of the previous year which is normal at any football club,” the head coach said during his pre-match comments. “But we want to stabilise, try and improve and make our supporters happy, because we know the last few weeks before the break weren’t nice for us. Results suffered, performances weren’t where we wanted them to be, and we have to do better than that.”

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The one negative in the Bournemouth result was the withdrawal of Reece James having put in a half during which he’d demonstrated, cruelly, what Chelsea had been missing during his absence due to a knee injury. When that injury occurred again, right in front of the dugout, a collective groan extended around Stamford Bridge. That was just how much difference James had made. If, then, you add his left-sided wingback counterpart Ben Chilwell to the injury list, a picture emerges of why Chelsea have looked pedestrian without the pair, marauding forward to cut in, or providing flank protection to a central defensive trio that includes the 38-year-old Thiago Silva. It’s worth noting that since the start of last season Chelsea have won 82% of the games James and Chilwell have started together, and lost just once. Given that both players have been injured for varying periods of that record, you have to wonder what could have been with them fully intact.

So, move on a few days to yesterday’s New Year’s Day visit to second-from-bottom Nottingham Forest, whose manager Steve Cooper knew exactly where to exploit weakness. The resulting 1-1 scoreline flattered Chelsea with, perhaps, the one bright spot being Raheem Sterling’s long overdue sixth goal out of 17 appearances. Full credit, then, to Cooper for inspiring his side into not lying down. But questions must be asked as to why Potter was unable to eek another three points out of a squad in which the club’s new owners invested an additional £270 million last summer. Word is there’s even more expenditure to come. Money, as we all know, doesn’t necessarily solve problems. 

“I think Potter needs time,” was the conclusion of Graeme Souness after the Forest game. “This is not a squad equipped to go and win big games of football. Their goal difference is plus-two.”. Which raises the obvious question: if not, what does £270 million buy you, then? Not a lot, it would seem. None of Chelsea’s summer purchases have exactly set the world alight.

What is emerging are doubts about co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali’s buying strategy, which has appeared more urgent largesse than tactical solution finding. £170 million of that spend went on defenders. By any measure of expectation, Kalidou Koulibaly (a £33 million buy from Napoli), Marc Cucurella (£56 million from Brighton) and Wesley Fofana (almost £70 million from Leicester - and has only made six appearances due to injury), should have made some difference. But, it would seem, no. Koulibaly was meant to resolve the departures of Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen, both of whose contracts had run down amid dissatisfaction with successive managers, and then exploited the vacuum caused by Roman Abramovich’s forced disposal of the club.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

Against Forest, Chelsea were exposed at the back. Playing a four, with Koulibaly and Silva flanked by club captain César Azpilicueta and Cucurella, Chelsea looked leaden through the middle, with Jorginho labouring despite loanee Denis Zakaria putting in a decent shift. As wingbacks, Azpiliqueta and Cucurella are no substitutes for James and Chilwell, either in terms of guile or agility. Which means more is expected from the midfield. But here questions must be asked about Jorginho’s viability. In turn, the forward line of Pulisic, Havertz and Sterling look somewhat anaemic, with the American blowing hot and cold (frustratingly, he was outstanding for the USA in Qatar) and the German still unsure of whether he is a false 9 or an actual 9. Hakim Zyech doesn’t seem to have Potter’s confidence as a starting option, despite an outstanding appearance for Morocco at the World Cup. That seemed to merely confirm that he wanted to remain in the shop window, because God knows he hasn’t appeared to be interested in playing for his club when he’s been given the chance.

What this all ladders up to is that Chelsea are, after all that outlay, lacking from front to back. Even if you factor in a lengthening injury list that includes N’Golo Kanté (who surely must be reaching the end of his contract and usefulness, anyway, given that he spends more time on the treatment table these days than a football pitch), the project must surely be about a wholesale blood transfusion rather than more purchases which essentially paper over cracks that have existed in the plasterwork for a long time. 

As one Twitter wag noted yesterday after the draw with Forest, Chelsea have burned through Antonio Conte, Maurizio Sarri, club legend Frank Lampard and Tuchel as managers in the last six years, but some of the same players that engendered their sacking are still on the books. A harsh assessment maybe, but it is perhaps why the appointment of RB Leipzig’s Christopher Vivell as technical director could be the most important signing of the Boehly era (replacing the American chairman himself who’d been fulfilling the role ad-interim). 

Maybe that will stem the apparently naive acquisitions of players like striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, bought in an act of transfer deadline day desperation, presumably in the belief that he could reconnect with former Borussia Dortmund manager Tuchel, only for the coach to be fired five days later. In fairness, Chelsea have been staffing up behind the scenes under the new ownership, especially within its much-vaunted academy, but the attention - and expectation - will always fall on the first team.

And so, we enter another January window. Received wisdom is that player signings at this time of year smack of shotgun wedding, and often end in disappointment (case in point: Fernando Torres). So far, the club has brought in 20-year-old Ivorian striker David Datro Fofana to cover for Armando Broca’s long-term injury, and central defender Benoît Badiashile has joined from Monaco for around £32 million. As is now the custom, Chelsea are being linked with just about every other player who performed with distinction at the World Cup in the belief that the Boehly-Clearlake chequebook contains endless blank pages.

This does bring the spotlight back to Graham Potter. Whether he gets time remains to be seen, but compared to his predecessors, the threat of a P45 isn’t as immediate under the new owners as they had been under Abramovich. But even that doesn’t insulate him. Potter’s challenge - which he hitherto hasn’t encountered in his managerial career - is to turn a squad that still contains Champions League-winning players from only May 2021 back into Top Four competitors. Which on yesterday’s evidence and today’s view of the Premier League table, in which Chelsea sit eighth, seems unlikely.

The impending period will, though, pile on the pressure. Potter’s next two games are against Manchester City - the first, at home in the league, the second, three days later, at the Etihad in the FA Cup. There’s little respite beyond that, either, with a trip down the Fulham Road to upbeat neighbours at Craven Cottage, before returning to Stamford Bridge for Crystal Palace, and then back on the road to Anfield, all before the January window shuts. No wonder fans are anxious. Some have become openly hostile to Potter, though these tend to be keyboard gobshites offering little more than Mauricio Pochettino’s name as an alternative, and who patently haven’t read the situation that the Chelsea coach found himself in when he drove up the A23 from Brighton to his new job in September.

Fresh blood might help - sorry, fresh blood should help - but the bottom line is that Chelsea have too many players who are, to varying degrees, underperforming in seemingly untouchable positions. Some might be doing so because of the players around them, while with others it’s because they simply lack the winning mentality required at the club. 

It’s often said that Chelsea have never been as good as the team that won trophies repeatedly under José Mourinho with a spine of serial winners - and leaders - that ran from goal (Petr Čech), through central defence (John Terry), central midfield (Lampard) to the front (Didier Drogba). The club has, of course, won silverware since that quartet’s retirements, but in its current line-up, it’s hard to identify where the strengths are. Capabilities are there, no doubt, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Chelsea are currently a collection of individuals. But there’s something patently missing.

It doesn’t need to be found immediately, though. A period of purdah from open-top buses might allow the club to re-establish the imperiousness of the early Abramovich era, and the success that had eluded it in the preceding 34 years. The trouble is, success is a very demanding mistress. And a lucrative one, too. Which might tip the weight of expectation on Graham Potter’s shoulders against him in the months ahead.

With 20/20 hindsight...

I'm not going to rewrite my own history. Frank Lampard's removal in January still hurts (see posts passim). But what Thomas Tuchel produced on Saturday in Porto, out of the same group of players who’d started the season under Lampard, was a tactical masterclass. The result, a 17th major trophy - and for the second time, Europe’s most prestigious - under Roman Abramovich’s ownership suggests that the philosophy of silverware over managerial longevity works. 

To those of a principled nature, this apparently mercenary need for cups might sit uncomfortably with a more purist, romantic view of football. But Saturday’s win over the even more lavishly resourced Manchester City, whose owner even paid for the club’s fans to be flown to and from Portugal, revealed something of the notion that it’s not always about money. That might sound rich from the fan of a club where money has, actually, bought quite a lot. But money didn’t buy that victory - directly - it was Tuchel’s tactics, plus Pep Guardiola’s decision not to play start with Fernandinho and Rodri, and add a little bit of free stardust from the Chelsea Academy. 

One genuinely satisfying outcome of the Champions League Final was the sight of Mason Mount and Reece James making such outstanding contributions to the win - the former with his midfield-splitting pass to Kai Havertz for the goal, the latter for his robust maturity in preventing City’s fearsome attack from clawing back. You could also cite Andreas Christensen and Christian Pulisic, both of whom have experience of Chelsea’s youth system. Havertz’s goal was most satisfying, simply because the £71 million signing had taken a while to settle in the side since his arrival last summer, with a huge price tag on his shoulders. A nasty bout of COVID-19 didn’t help, either. Perplexingly, he’s still not the out-and-out forward Chelsea so desperately need. 

Timo Werner, bless him, once again demonstrated how a full season and the injection of a fellow German to manage him still hasn’t done anything to improve his finishing. A return of 12 goals in 51 games (and just two in 23) over all competitions is by any measure woeful for a striker, especially one who arrived from Leipzig last summer, having bagged 28 strikes out of 34 Bundesliga games alone. So with the sadly outcast Tammy Abraham - another youth product - and Olivier Giroud destined for pastures new, if Chelsea are to close the gap with City in the Premier League, Werner either needs to dramatically improve his lethality, or Mr. Abramovich has to get his cheque book out again.

The youth element of Chelsea’s make-up has been the core of the club narrative over the last two seasons. When Frank Lampard took over, he had little option but to play the youngsters, thanks to the UEFA transfer ban in place. His existing familiarity with players like Mount, as well as the history of assistants Joe Edwards and Jody Morris working with the Academy, meant their progression added chapters to the fairy tale. And thus it continued when Tuchel took over, though he fell back on experience and maturity to begin with, probably as a safety net, before increasingly seeing what Mount and James could do. The same applied to Ben Chilwell, who’d joined from Leicester last summer, but seemed to take a while to win the new coach over, with the unreliable (in my opinion) Marcos Alonso getting the nod over him. 

It would, however, be too easy to make Saturday night’s victory a romantic one about youngsters alone: just look at the shift the near-32-year-old captain César Azpilicueta put in, or the 36-year-old Thiago Silva, before his groin gave out, or even Antonio Rüdiger. And just how magnificent was the diminutive N’Golo Kanté, who turned 30 in March, placing him in the category of players Chelsea likes to offer limited-length contracts from now on (but would be utterly insane not to tie him down, based on the form he’s shown this season). Kanté was everywhere against City, and while it’s become something of a cliche to refer to him as two players in one, he was, once more, more than just a holding player, but frequently the origin of Chelsea’s forward runs, attacks that exposed Guardiola’s midfield folly.

Here, then, is where I run the risk of revisionism. Chelsea were in some trouble in January when Lampard - forever a club legend - was fired. It’s possible that they could have dug themselves out of it, but heads had noticeably dropped. I still can’t reconcile my thoughts: could Frank have benefitted from a more experienced director of football to manage him? Or was it just too soon, ultimately, to be managing the club? John Terry beware, if so. 

Thomas Tuchel is not naive. He will know full well of the managerial toll that has come with the successes of the Abramovich era. Saturday’s result was the third occasion Chelsea have won a title at the end of a season where the manager has changed midway through. Maybe the Russian owner knows what he's doing, after all. His instincts for pulling the trigger at the right time seem uncannily sharp, but it’s hard not to wonder why those instincts weren’t apparent when some appointments were made in the first place. Avram Grant, André Villas-Boas, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Maurizio Sarri, even José Mourinho (twice)  and Lampard himself were all, to some extent, experiments that failed, requiring Guus Hiddink or the detested (but successful) Rafa Benítez to be parachuted in. 

Tuchel took over an increasingly listless team, instilled some defensive fortitude into them and plugged the leaks. It’s likely that he will now be offered to extend his somewhat tentative 18-month contract. If nothing else earns it, the ‘cup with the big ears’ should do so (not that Chelsea winning it helped Roberto Di Matteo - appointed in March 2012, fired the following November). Tuchel’s tactical victory on Saturday over Guardiola has, at least, quelled the disquiet over Chelsea’s end to the domestic season, with their only-just fourth place in the Premier League, having lost games at crucial moments, and Leicester’s convincing victory in the FA Cup Final which denied Tuchel his only other chance of securing silver.

But taken into another context, along the way, Tuchel has now outsmarted Guardiola three times in six weeks, which poses the enticing prospect of Chelsea mounting a credible challenge to City next term. In the Premier League, Tuchel arrested any further decline and pushed Chelsea back into European contention, just. He took them into an FA Cup Final. And - most impressively - he masterminded superb knockout-round victories over Atlético Madrid, Saturday night’s hosts, Porto, Real Madrid and then City. It’s not been lost on commentators that the near-deity Pep Guardiola’s desire to win Europe’s biggest prize continues, while Thomas Tuchel has achieved it in only five months. He’s not the Special One, but on Saturday’s evidence, he is pretty special. Wish I’d known that when I wagged the finger of doom in January and said that Chelsea should be careful what they wished for. I mean, what do I know?

When will they ever learn?

Well, we can't say we weren't warned. Frank Lampard's sacking has been on the cards, even before the mid-season slump. Some rumours suggest that the club was unhappy with things at the end of last season, Lampard's first in charge, and one which began with a transfer ban, the loss of Eden Hazard, and a reliance on fast-tracking youth, and ended with a FA Cup Final appearance, fourth spot in the Premier League and qualification for this season's Champions League (which, by the way, Chelsea are into the last 16).

But, then, this is Chelsea. Whatever the end-of-term report last summer said has merely been compounded by the indifferent form in recent weeks, losing five of the last eight league games and, then, not losing well. Yesterday's win over Luton Town in the FA Cup Fourth Round was a welcome fillip, but with more potential banana skin league fixtures coming up with Wolves on Wednesday and Burnley on Sunday, Roman Abramovich is clearly not taking any chances. The FA Cup is one thing. The Premier League is something else entirely. 

And, so, the wheel at Chelsea Football Club turns once more, with another manager making way after a short tenure. A penny, then, for the thoughts of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and even Ole Gunnar Solskjær, none of whom produced spectacular results in the early days of their time as managers at Manchester City, Liverpool and Manchester United, and yet have, generally, come extremely good. Lampard has had just 18 months in charge, admittedly with six or so of those with £200 million-plus worth of new players under his belt, including the likes of Timo Werner and Kai Havertz, Germans of whom much has been expected, and yet haven't yet delivered. The thinking now is that Lampard will be replaced by a German-speaking manager to get the best out of the pair, with Leipzig's Julian Nagelsmann and former PSG boss Thomas Tuchel high on the list, as well as Southampton's Ralph Hasenhüttl.

As this blog (and its predecessor) has catalogued, depressingly, Chelsea's impatience is frustrating. Then again, you could argue, somewhat coldly, that Chelsea's habit of dispensing with managers so frequently has been key to their success. It does, though, leave this fan in particular feeling dispirited. Club loyalty isn't bought by success. While we have, in the Abramovich era, enjoyed a success that wouldn't have seemed possible when I first went regularly to Stamford Bridge, with Chelsea playing in front of crowds of 7,000 in the old Second Division, we have always enjoyed a sense of entitlement to being something bigger (and in those days, far bigger than we actually were). Today, Chelsea are considered part of the "big six", a fact that still sticks in the craw of Liverpool and Manchester United fans who've experienced their own wilderness years (adding Tottenham to that cabal for good measure). But we are where we are, and Abramovich's largesse has got us there. And so it's only natural that he should be ruthless in protecting his investment. But with each managerial sacking - especially with someone universally liked, and particularly so, in the case of Lampard - a little piece of the love for Chelsea dies.

I get it. It's a business, and if you run a business badly, your board will remove you. But football is also a different animal. It's sport, performance sport. Elite players are not plug-and-play components, and while I don't even pretend to understand the science that goes into football coaching, I know that you can't just match up a coach and a set of expensively-assembled players and it all falls into place. And even when it does, new challenges come along. Again, just ask Guardiola, Klopp, Solskjær, Mourinho, Arteta or any one of the other Premier League managers who, at various times, walk the tightrope.

Time, we know, is not in the football manager's gift, and Chelsea managers in particular know this more than most. What frustrates me more than anything else about Lampard's sacking is not his exalted status as the club's all-time record goalscorer and a proper club legend, but that he hasn't been given time to develop the project. Success under Abramovich has to be instant. This, I also believe, is because he has too many people in his ear who are more concerned with what the football commentariat has to say than the actual reality. It feels like Lampard has been talked into the sack by media headlines saying that, though I'm sure the decision-making process was a lot more thorough than simply looking at the back pages.

Taking out, for a moment, the emotional attachment fans have to Lampard, he represented a challenge that always was going to need time. In his maiden season in charge, it was clear that the youngsters (and club youth products) he was forced to play, like Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Reece James and Callum Hudson-Odoi actually represented a promising future. They still do, of course, especially Mount, who was given the captain's armband yesterday against Luton and looked like it was his destiny, especially having been at Chelsea since he was six-years-old. Managerial comings-and-goings are part of football, so even to these youngsters Lampard's sacking won't be a surprise. These kids will not have been immune to the ruthlessness with which Abramovich has axed his managers (which isn't all that different to the attrition rate under Ken Bates). But taking the helicopter view, it's a worry that, having been brought on so far, a change of manager and the likelihood of someone with absolutely no past connection with this talented group will impede their development. Look how many loan spells Abraham had before any first team head coach would give him a start.

It remains to be seen who Chelsea will go with now, but it's safe to assume that the names of Tuchel and Nagelsmann appearing in the press is no coincidence. Tuchel, in particular, will be a divisive appointment, given his departure from PSG and the nature of his relationship with the French club's hierarchy. The bottom line, though, is that there doesn't seem to be the ideal Chelsea manager. None last long, not even a favourite son like Lampard. The last such gamble on a younger manager was André Villas-Boas, appointed in June 2011 and fired the following March. His replacement, Roberto Di Matteo - another club legend - went on to win the Champions League itself...only to be fired in the November after a dip in form. And so the cavalcade of managers - some popular choices, like Carlo Ancelotti, some less popular, like Rafa Benitez - has come and gone. At the same time, the club has won four league titles under three different managers, five FA Cup finals under as many head coaches, and three European trophies under three bosses. Yes, there may be some method in the madness, but it leaves the bitterest of tastes in the mouth. As The Times' chief football writer, Henry Winter, wrote prophetically this morning: "A personal wish would be for Lampard to be given until the end of the season, given a chance to get Chelsea back into the Champions League, and if he fails, at least Abramovich can look a club legend in the eye and say thanks but goodbye. Lampard certainly deserves that respect." That he does, that he does.

Time for a Monday Moan? Not just yet

Picture: BBC Sport

Long-standing readers of this blog might recall a tradition that set in during José Mourinho's brief final season as Chelsea manager. After signing a new contract on August 7th, 2015 (which, incidentally, would have expired only last year), Mourinho oversaw a run of games that saw Chelsea pick up just 11 points from their first 12 Premier League fixtures, and exit the League Cup to Stoke by October. By December 17th, when Mourinho left Stamford Bridge for a second time ("by mutual consent"), the club had lost nine of its 16 league matches. Chelsea were in something of a death spiral and, at the moment of the Portuguese's departure, were one place above the relegation zone.

Along the way, my posts became exponentially more exasperated, to the extent that, like my very first missive in the blogosphere (a rant about England's exit from the 2010 World Cup, written the morning after), I established a history of letting rip on the first working day of the week. During Mourinho's progressive denouement at Chelsea, my Facebook updates to promote such posts became known as The Monday Moan.

That I mention this today, the Monday after Chelsea lost yesterday - and didn’t lose well - is something of a coincidence: it is too soon, two games into the new season, to get into a cycle of misery, especially as they won their first, last Monday, against Brighton, and they were, yesterday, playing the newly-crowned English league champions. But this is what football is about. A bad result at the weekend - even one as gloriously sunny and summery as this one was - is all it takes to start the week in a fug. But (and here’s where a football fan’s acute sense of denial instantly kicks in) there is need for some - some - perspective.

To summarise, Chelsea, with their expensively assembled, £230 million of summer acquisitions, were facing Liverpool at the Bridge in only their second competitive game of the season. In some respects, a tough break to meet last season’s champions so soon, but then to think that way is to already take on a defeatist view. Chelsea, after all, did finish fourth - an unlikely outcome, given the challenges of a transfer ban and relying heavily on youth last season. But that shouldn't necessarily mean that meeting Liverpool is anything less than a peer encounter. Chelsea-Liverpool has always been one of the fixtures I’ve attended religiously, dating back to the late 1970s, when the Merseysiders were imperious and the Londoners were in the mire of financial crises. That, to the 11-year-old me, was less apparent. What drew me in was that these two teams represented the classic football confrontation: the blues and the reds. Human Subbuteo. And thus it has continued for 40-plus years, all through the storied (and well-documented - see my post from June, Red Rain) history of encounters between the teams. 

So, then, yesterday. A cagey start by both sides saw Liverpool increase their presence, pressing Chelsea high and clearly setting out to test a largely unchanged defence, their Achilles heel all last season. That approach won out on the stroke of half time when Andreas Christensen lost his head and rugby-tackled Sadio Mané to the ground as he charged through on goal, to be rightfully dismissed after a VAR review of the initial yellow card. No one, least of all Christensen, should have had any complaints. After the break, Liverpool came out to face ten-man Chelsea with renewed, ominous purpose, Mané proving the tormentor twice, scoring within five minutes of the interval, and again, four minutes later. Perhaps Chelsea could be credited with keeping the scoreline at 0-2 for the remaining 35 minutes of play, but it was the nature of those two conceded goals that require the attention.

That £230 million has mostly been spent on attacking players, and given Timo Werner’s exciting pace (and a couple of decent chances yesterday he’ll regret), and the gradual introduction of the £71 million Kai Havertz, Chelsea could have one of the most fearsome attacking line-ups in the Premier League, given all the other options in Frank Lampard’s toolbox. But, as has been recanted verbatim over recent months, it’s at the back that changes are needed, and needed fast. Ben Chilwell, the left-back Chelsea coveted for some time, is yet to make his debut due to injury, meaning the defensively weak wingback Marcos Alonso continues to have put his lack of defensive pace and positioning on display. So it proved with Mané’s first goal, the result of Liverpool sending the Senegalese winger, plus Keïta, Alexander-Arnold, Salah and Firmino into the final third, baffling Chelsea’s defenders (now with Tomori replacing Christensen). Firmino beat Alonso to cut the ball across for Mané to head into the goal. For once, Chelsea’s Kepa Arrizabalaga couldn’t be blamed, directly. For what happened next, he could.

They say that if you’re already in a hole it’s a good idea to stop digging, but Arrizabalaga has clearly not heard this adage. As if he needed to add to the growing list of calamities, what seemed like a bread-and-butter clearance out to Jorginho was intercepted too easily by Mané, who simply poked it into the net with the casual ease of someone sweeping a tin can out of the way.

Almost to a newspaper, every back page today has said the exact same thing: Édouard Mendy cannot arrive from Rennes soon enough. We’re told that the goalkeeper's £20 million signing is imminent, but on this display from Chelsea's current stopper, Frank Lampard’s first duty this morning was probably to bang on Marina Granovskaia’s office door with a demand to know where she currently is with the Mendy deal, and to even offer a few quid of his own money to tip the balance of any last-minute wrangling.

Taking a step back, Chelsea weren’t helped yesterday by reticence. It was almost as if they were intimidated from the outset by Jurgen Klopp’s champions. They certainly allowed Liverpool’s high press to get the better of them, meaning that the Londoners’ defence was, once again, thin ice waiting to crack. The suggestion, here is one of a gulf in class, but when you look at where Chelsea have spent their money this summer, I genuinely think that they’ve got what it takes to compete within the top four. But it will take time. The veteran Thiago Silva, signed from PSG, has yet to make his debut, like Chilwell, meaning that the obvious weaknesses in defence have yet to be strengthened. Havertz is only two games in, and while Werner is looking sharp, he’s still, understandably, getting his timing right. With the other newbie, Hakim Ziyech, injured along with Christian Pulisic, arguably, the natural heir to Eden Hazard, Chelsea’s expensive new line-up is yet to take shape. Lampard, though, for all his exalted status amongst the club’s fans, also needs to learn better of what to do with these assets. One criticism of last season was that he wasn’t able to settle on an optimum defensive line-up, and that appears to have continued into this season. None of his central defenders appear rooted in the role (with Antonio Rudiger not even in yesterday’s squad), so with a risky goalkeeper and a never-the-same line-up in front of him, the inconsistencies have been laid bare.

Ever the diplomat, Lampard tried to put a supportive arm around his first-choice keeper. Accepting the Spaniard’s “clear mistake” for Liverpool’s second goal, he said after the match that: “We have to keep working, Kepa has to keep working.” Though acknowledging that it had been two games out of two that Kepa had dropped a clanger (conceding Leandro Trossard's goal last Monday against Brighton), he said: “Players need support, particularly from myself. I give that to all the players. Kepa has to keep working, nobody tries to make mistakes in football, it is the nature of the game. You have to be strong, you keep going and that is where he is at." Quite what Lampard’s mood is like privately is up for debate.

What he does know, or at least should know, as he opened up training this morning at Cobham, is that all the spending on top European attacking talent will amount to nothing if his defence continues to leak goals like they did last season. And, at risk of sounding ungrateful, the addition of just two new defenders (well, I say ‘new’, but Silva is now 35), means that more, much more, needs to be done with what Lampard already has in the department. In Reece James and Fikayo Tomori, for example, two youngsters of genuine promise, but still with much to learn. Stability - rooted in a goalkeeper who knows what he’s doing and can command those in front of him - is essential. That won’t come quickly, or easily.

But, to step back a bit further, there's a reason why I'm not yet ready to reinstate the Monday Moan. Yesterday's game was a tough schooling for Lampard, and from the one club Chelsea fans would have preferred not to have received it from (well, maybe the other club, if you include Tottenham). Two games in, it's too soon to press the panic button. For context, go back to 2016 and Antonio Conte's first season in charge. By September 11th, Chelsea's early season wins had been arrested by a 2-2 draw with Swansea. Then came back-to-back defeats - to Liverpool and Arsenal, the latter a humiliating 3-0 reverse. Conte had seen enough and switched to the 3-4-3 wingback system that would propel the team to Premier League champions eight months later, and with a 13-point margin over runners-up Spurs. The point here is that it really is too soon to moan, even if, this morning, it's fully justified.

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”.