Chelsea manager, Frank Lampard has admitted he is still striving to find the perfect center-back partnership at the club.
This is one fo the position that Chelsea is still trying to fix in Premier League run-in. This has been the Blues nemesis, judging from the team’s last two results. Chelsea scaled through Crystal Palace with a 3-2 win before being hammered 3-0 by Sheffield at the Bramall Lane over the weekend.
Chelsea is the team that conceded the most Premier League goals inside the top 10 this season, scoring 63 and conceding 49.
Lampard had since the beginning of the season shuffled between Antonio Rudiger, Fikayo Tomori, Andreas Christensen, and Kurt Zouma. The former Derby County boss had also at times during the campaign, shifted to three at the back in certain matches, with Cesar Azpilicueta also moving into the center.
Lampard still mismatching the center backs
Lampard, who often focuses his attention when games have been lost on the last of clinical nature in front of goal, couldn’t deny this time around that he is still having to mix and match to get the right combination.
“It’s not cut and dried. You want to get settled relationships, but if we are making individual errors, some can be collective, but individual errors or multiple errors into goals which we’ve seen recently against West Ham and Sheffield United, then you have to take that into account.
“At the same time, I don’t want players think they will be out of the team if they make one mistake so there is a balance to that. But clearly we haven’t found that partnership in that area that I’ve settled on and that’s something we’re striving for.”
While noting that his team has scored a lot of goals, Lampard said they should have scored more.
“Another 10 or 15 goals would be how I would feel in being clinical in front of goal because we create a lot.
“In terms of defensively, there is a way that I want us to play and it’s not gung-ho, it’s not crazy, a lot of the goals are the balls that come into our box that maybe we don’t defend right at that moment and that’s something that has to improve and I feel I know the answers to it.
“Some of it is work and that’s something we will see and it’s part of the process we are in. I don’t like it, I hate conceding goals but we have to work harder on it.”
