Why Frank Lampard has become a victim of his own success.

To start of this thread let's establish what went down when Chelsea hired Frank Lampard as manager in the summer of 2019. What were their expectations for him? What were their goals for the team? Their demands?

Expectations - For starters, it's obvious that the Chelsea board knew that Frank was inexperienced and that he needed time to gain that experience. They would never give him this chance if they weren't ready to give him that time.

The expectations going into last season...

(and I have this on relatively good authority) was to qualify for the Europa League. Any group-stage qualification from the CL or any run in any domestic cup was seen as merely a bonus and not an expectation.

Demands - Their demands were for Frank to use the vast amount...

of talent that Chelsea's academy had produced at Cobham for years. Players such as Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Reece James etc. It was also demanded that he play a fearless attacking style of play that would be entertaining for fans, and the board themselves to watch.

Going beyond the first season(this was always a 3-year plan), was the transfer market in the summer, where the expectations were to offload some players that were deemed surplus to requirements and to bring in players that will give Chelsea a lot of joy for years to come...

AKA young, exceptionally talented players. It was obviously important that these players were going to strengthen the first-team/starting XI and not take up a place on the bench(something Antonio Conte was good spending money on).

The expectations for this 2nd season...

from a sporting point was to qualify for the top 4, make a run in the EL(as that was where we were expected to be playing) and to make a run in a domestic cup, while also seeing clear improvements in playing style(worth to note that this plan was made before Covid-19...

which has severly impacted team's ability to work on tactics and player relations).

For the 3rd season(2021/22), the expectation was to clear out the remaining "deadwood", sign the remaining pieces of the puzzle, compete for the PL and CL while competing in both domestic cups.

So the question should be asked, would Frank's job currently be under threat and would fans currently be asking for his head if he hadn't done so well early on? If he didn't do too well, too early?

Imagine just for a second that Chelsea finished 6th last season...

and as expected were eliminated by Liverpool in the round of 16 of the FA Cup and maybe even failed to qualify for the CL-knockout rounds. That would have been viewed as a good start, granted he played attacking football and gave youth a chance, which he did.

Imagine this season we were fighting for top 4 and that we were only 3 points behind(7 points behind first) 4th place with 21 games to go.

Had this been the case, I will make an educated guess and say that people would be happy about that and would have admitted to seeing..

clear progess from last season in terms of where we are in comparison to other teams, such as Liverpool and Man City.

Instead of doing what he was expected to do though, he qualified for the CL instead of the EL, made it all the way to the FA Cup final and even made it...

past the Champions League group stage, all of which was a big over-performance.

He also had academy talent Tammy Abraham finish as the club's top scorer, had Mason Mount making the most appearances and has Reece James winning the RB spot from club icon and arguably even legend..

César Azpilicueta. He even managed to beat all of the top 6 at least once, showing some great tactical skills in the process.

A bonus of Frank's management is his immense pull in the transfer market and clear quality in squad-building. Not only has he given a chance to..

all the right academy players and cleared out all the right "deadwood" players, but he also managed to convince some of the most coveted young superstars to join Chelsea ahead of other big clubs.

He started off this season by only losing one of his first 19 games...

which includes a 17-game unbeaten run(the longest by any team in all competitions in Europe's top 5 leagues this season). He also guided Chelsea through their best ever Champions League group stage and was top of the league after GW12, having scored the most goals,...

had the most clean sheets, the best goal difference and conceded the joint fewest amount of goals.

Then boom, the bad run of form, that Lampard had been warning the fans and media about for months, arrived and suddenly it's more popular than not to want him gone.

Suddenly he's not the right man for the job.

The top 4 finish last season has made people believe that a comfortable finish in the top 4 was the least we could expect this season. The run in the FA Cup made people think anything but a trophy was acceptable this season.

The fact that we were in a "title race" 12 games into the season made people believe that we were going to stay in that title race till the very end, scoring more goals and conceding less goals than everyone else, despite Frank warning everyone otherwise.

Yet again, the man who has been a part of football since he was born, the man who was a part of one of the most successful dressing rooms of the modern era, was right and the fans(myself included), with no experience of this whatsoever, was wrong.

But why did the bad form happen? Why wasn't it sustainable? What happened?

Well, there are a lot of mixing factors for that such as fatigue, bad luck, inexperience from the players as well as the coaching staff.

For starters, all and I mean ALL of the new signings...

Chelsea made, and I can't stress this enough, UNREALISTICALLY hit the ground running. Them being an instand success had NOTHING to do with Lampard as he didn't have the time work with them. Likewise, they're bad form has got nothing to do with Lampard as well as he...

still haven't really had any time to work with them. So why are they struggling? Well, only one of them has been able to keep a pretty decent level through the month of December and that is Ben Chilwell. What are the odds that he is the only one that came from the Premier League?

Not high. Playing through the christmas schedule in the PL is a tough first-time experience for everyone that haven't done it before. Now add to that this very special season and you can understand why this is pretty much out of the manager's control. They...

will suffer from fatigue and their performance levels will naturally go down along with that.

Now I also mentioned luck/margins and for good reason. Chelsea were very fortunate in the early stages of the season. They were getting a lot of penalties, they didn't hit...

the woodworks a whole lot, they weren't conceding fluke goals and they had a GK that was over-performing his xGA.

Suddenly, in addition to fatigue(energetic players are crucial to Lampard's aggressively pressing system) Chelsea suddenly stopped getting penalties,

suddenly they started hitting the woodworks often(Everton x3, Wolves x1, Arsenal x1 + a missed pen) and margins were suddenly going against them, which happens.

Unfortunately for Chelsea it happened at the worst possible time. Everything has happened at once.

Also, the coaching staff has shown a lack of experience in certain games and so has the players but you know what? That was expected as they ARE inexperienced and this was really all a part of the long-tern plan. You want success? Then you better be prepared to suffer for it.

Regarding the fatigue point, to prove how much Chelsea rely on their energy, they are the only team to have out-run Leeds this season and they did it by 6km. It's not random that through this 6 game spell they failed to match Everton's intensity..

they looked tired and sloppy both against Wolves and against West-Ham. They failed to match Arsenal's intensity as well as Aston Villa's and Man City's.

You can argue that he should have rested players such as Chilwell, Mount, Kanté and Werner but who would he realistically...

put in? Fine, I can see Werner as we had other options but you rest Chilwell and that means Emerson or Alonso has to play. You rest Kanté, that means Jorginho has to shield the defence. You rest Mount, that means more attacking resposibility for Kovačić.

You rest those players, you make the team as a whole far worse.

Now I do believe Chelsea will turn this around in the next 2 months. You know why? Because this 12 day period between the Man City and Fulham games is the first time this season where players has been given...

time to recover. It's the first time this season that they will be given time to work on tactics and personal relations in training. The Morecambe and Fulham games couldn't have come at a better time. Just a nice rest should be more than enough to rediscover some form in this...

team.

So I ask the question again, would Lampard's job have been at risk if he would have been in the exact same position he is in now(league position, tactics etc) if he didn't do TOO well, TOO early?

Is it a chance that expectations has gone away from people..

because of the fact that they have actually over-achieved based on what was initially expected?