Earlier this morning Frank Lampard’s tenure as Chelsea manager has come to end after the club have sacked him after a disappointing season so far. After spending over 200 million euros in the summer transfer market Chelsea are currently 9th place, 5 points away from the Champions league spots and 11 away from the top of the table.
Chelsea have a reputation of being ruthless towards their managers, but many thought they would be more patient with Lampard being a club legend and enter a new approach with integrating the youth. However as proven before, Roman Abramovich shows no sympathy towards his managers if they fail to reach his expectations and Lampard has joined the list of 12 managers axed since becoming Chelsea owner in 2003.
Chelsea are currently in terrible run of form in the Premier League. Since December 12th they have played 8 games and only gotten 7 points out of the possible 24, as well as 2 wins, 1 draw, and 5 losses. In these 8 games they have scored 8 goals and conceded 16. Their defense has seem to gotten weaker since the start of the season and their summer signing aren’t reaching their expectations.
German duo Timo Werner (53 million) and Kai Havertz (83 million) were signed for a combined fee of 138 million euros and have both failed to make an impact in the premier league. Werner has scored 4 goals and 4 assists this season and Havertz, Chelsea’s club record signing, has 1 goal 2 assists. These are poor numbers compared to the duo’s stats last year in the Bundesliga. Werner had 28 goals and 8 assists and Havertz had 12 goals and 6 assists, no where near as to what they have this year. The failure to get these two to become goal threats is the main cause of Lampard’s downfall, as well as the treatment towards academy graduate Callum Hudson-Odio.
Hudson-Odio rarely gets any game time, even though he’s been Chelsea most dangerous threat on the wings so far this season. Injuries have been one cause of his lack of game time, but he’s played 10 games with only 3 starts in the league. Every time he’s on the pitch he’s usually Chelsea’s biggest threat on goal.
Although I believe Abramovich is being ruthless by sacking Lampard, it’s understandable why he decided to do it. In the summer transfer window they signed 7 players and although it is hard to integrate 7 new players into a side, the squad shouldn’t be doing worse than they were last season. They were one of the only sides who were able to strengthen massively as most rival sides failed to sign their targets due to financial struggles from the coronavirus. They have a squad that should be challenging for the title and not for Europa League qualification as they are now. There’s really no excuses for Lampard and truthfully, the only reason he lasted this long is due to his status of being a Chelsea icon, being the club’s top goal scorer with 211 goals. The job was simply given to early for him in is managerial career.
Alex's Soccer Blog 