The manager of Chelsea football club, Frank Lampard, believes that he did not suffer defeat in the hands of Mikel Arteta’s led Arsenal on Saturday due to tactical deficiency but pointed out that his players were lazy during the match.
Chelsea visited the Emirates Stadium for the first time this season to play against a struggling Arsenal that have not recorded victory in their last 7 Premier League games before the boxing day encounter, yet, the star-studded squad could not do much.
They enjoyed 61 percent of the possession, made 506 passes, had 19 shots but only three of those shots managed to be on target, one of which ended at the back of the net throughout the Premier League game that ended 3-1 in favor of Arsenal.
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💽 Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea
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At the end of the day, Chelsea that were expecting to move from the 5th spot to the 2nd spot by defeating Arsenal ended up moving down the ladder to the 7th spot with 25 points in 15 league games.
The defeat to Arsenal is Chelsea’s 4th defeat in the league this season. The club has only enjoyed 7 victories and 4 draws so far this season. Besides that, between August and December 2020, coach Mikel Arteta has led Arsenal to defeat Frank Lampard’s led Chelsea twice.
Arteta first showed his tactical prowess over Lampard when they met in the FA Cup final on August 1, 2020. The encounter ended 2-1 in favor of Arsenal. The boxing day’s encounter made it the second time in a row that Arteta outclassed Lampard despite having more proven players to select from.
Despite suffering back to back defeats in the hands of Arteta, Lampard doesn’t want to give in to what is gradually becoming a fact that the Spanish coach is tactically superior to him. Hence, he had to share the blame with his players.
“It was an opportunity to go second against a team that are having a tough time”, Frank Lampard told Sky Sports after the match. “You either make it difficult for them or you give them a little opening and we did that from minute one and continued for 45 minutes. It was lazy to give away a penalty and lazy to give away a free-kick that he puts in the top corner.
“It wasn’t good enough. We fought in the second half but in the first half, we gave ourselves too much to do. The players who came on added speed energy and intensity.
“I’ll take responsibility on the outside but the players also have to take responsibility. The message was clear – Arsenal are a dangerous team. When you go out and play 60 or 70 percent then you’re not going to win any Premier League games.
“I’m very disappointed how we approached the first half, it’s not tactics or systems, it’s whether you want to run, back your team-mate up, sprint, or jog? And say ‘maybe I don’t have to run’ – we took that decision instead of the right one.”
Frank Lampard is not pleased with Timo Werner
Though he has blamed the laziness of his players for Chelsea’s first and second goals, Frank Lampard spent some seconds to highlights the ineffectiveness of his new signing Timo Werner.
Since the 24-year-old center-forward joined Chelsea from RB Leipzig for €53 million on July 1, 2020, Werner has managed to score 4 Premier League goals and provided 5 assists in 15 league games. These came in his first few games at the club but the reverse has been the case for him lately.
The Germany international has not scored a goal for Chelsea in his last 10 games in all competitions. He played the first 45 minutes in the game against Arsenal and had to be substituted before the commencement of the second half by Callum Hudson-Odoi when Arsenal have already scored Chelsea twice.
“Certainly the goals not going in is always something an attacking player will get judged on,” Lampard said regarding the form of Timo Werner.
“The subs, I could have made more. But I felt I had to make the subs in those two areas to inject energy.
“For today, Timo wasn’t giving us enough with or without the ball. Some of it we have to give him time. I keep saying the same thing because it’s a different league but we also have to get there quickly.
“We’ll see about the tiredness – I’ll have a conversation with him. But I felt I had to make changes to change the course of the match.”
As it stands, Frank Lampard and his boys need a victory over Aston Villa on Monday to return to being a title contender. If they suffer another defeat in their last league game of the year, that might start a lot of trouble for Lampard before next year.
