Chelsea sack Lampard: Why the Blues decided to axe club icon
So with a whimper rather than a bang, Frank Lampard's time at Chelsea came to an end. Despite a 3-1 win over Championship side Luton on Sunday to progress to the next round of the FA Cup, a run of one win in the last five league matches, leaving the club in ninth in the Premier League, saw the 42-year-old's time at the Stamford Bridge helm draw to a close.
When Lampard was appointed as Maurizio Sarri's successor 18 months ago, there was a buzz around west London. The club icon had returned to manage the side he'd enjoyed his most success at as a player. Returning as a manager felt like the coming of a new age at Chelsea, but the decision to bring Lampard back proved to be a false dawn.
A surprise appointment by Derby back in 2018, Lampard enjoyed a so-so debut campaign in club management, guiding the Rams to the 2019 playoff final, where they lost to Aston Villa. Nevertheless, with Sarri departing, Lampard seemed the natural replacement for the experienced Italian and, despite a transfer ban - they had at least pre-agreed deals in place for Mateo Kovacic and Christian Pulisic - the former midfielder did well to guide Chelsea to a top-four finish.
Admittedly, Lampard did take the club from third to fourth, but the departure of talisman Eden Hazard was always going to have an adverse effect on the team. Judging the inexperienced head coach on his first Premier League campaign was hardly fair, and it gave the club the ideal foundation to build upon to re-establish themselves as England's top side.
The transfer ban also allowed the Blues to save and spend big in a tranfer window that saw their rivals unable to splurge due to COVID-19. In came the likes of Edouard Mendy, Ben Chilwell, Kai Havertz and Timo Werner and many felt the arrivals would turn Chelsea into genuine title contenders once more.
Early signs were promising - there was the 17-game unbeaten record between September and December that had had supporters believing that Lampard would guide the Blues to their first league title since 2016/17, and they were top of the table as recently as December 5th - but that merely masked the underlying issues at the club. Their only league win this season against a team higher than 12th in the table was a 3-0 victory over West Ham in mid-December.
Chelsea Football Club has today parted company with Head Coach Frank Lampard.
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) January 25, 2021
Lampard has failed to eradicate mistakes in the team, with Chelsea committing more errors leading to an opposition goal (6) than any other Premier League side this season. The Blues may have been solid in the final third, with their 33 league goals the joint-fourth best in the division, but in turn they have conceded 23 times; only league leaders Manchester United (25) have shipped more of teams in the top half of the table. For context, 15th-placed Burnley (22) have conceded fewer.
Despite the capture of Mendy and Thiago Silva, two signings that have bolstered the backline, and looked to have rectified their defensive issues of last term, Chelsea are back to their shaky selves at the back. They key issue, though, has been a failure to coax out the best in Chelsea's big money summer investments. German duo Havertz and Werner arrived for a combined £119m from Bayer Leverkusen and RB Leipzig, respectively, but neither have been integrated properly, nor have they settled.
The system Lampard has implemented has come at the detriment of the duo with neither looking like their best Bundesliga selves in a Chelsea shirt. Too often, Havertz has either played in a deeper midfield role or out wide in a 4-3-3, looking lost in the process. The 21-year-old has scored one goal and provided two assists from his 16 league outings this season with a WhoScored rating of 6.50 among the worst of all Chelsea players.
Werner, meanwhile, looks all at sea on the left flank and, a penalty miss in the win over Luton, means he has scored just one goal in his last 16 appearances, that coming against League Two outfit Morecambe. Both Germany internationals were expected to be the statement signings for the west London powerhouse, yet Lampard has failed to bring out the best in the pair and, understandably, Chelsea are seeking to protect their costly investments rather than see them go to waste at Stamford Bridge.
The saving grace has been the form of both Mason Mount and Kurt Zouma, who rank first and second as Chelsea's best rated players in the Premier League this season, but even so; the latter has been inexplicably dropped in recent league outings in favour of Antonio Rudiger, with the Frenchman's last two appearances coming in the FA Cup. Off the pitch, the decision to player blame in recent weeks was never going to sit well and, over the last two months, his tactics have looked muddled and an identity found wanting.
And with Chelsea electing against waiting until the end of the season to assess Lampard and the direction the club is going, midway through 2020/21, the Blues have made the decision to relieve the former England international of his duties. The choice to hire him in the first place was supposed to be one for the future and restore Chelsea to their former glories, but the step up from Derby to Chelsea proved one too big for Lampard.
