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Publication date: Monday, September 7, 2020 7:10 AM
Kai Havertz’s £ 70m signing, the seventh acquisition of a remarkable summer at Chelsea, leaves Frank Lampard with no excuses next season – he must lead a Premier League title challenge.
Expectations were at a Roman Abramovich-era low in the summer of 2019. A team without Eden Hazard, hampered by the transfer ban, pushed by the academy didn’t need to do much to get their legendary coach’s first season considered. exit. And so it was: a fourth place in the Premier League meant that the Stamford Bridge conveyor belt would, for the moment, be reserved for players only.
Since the 2004-05 season, when José Mourinho signed Didier Drogba, Ricardo Carvalho, Arjen Robben and Petr Cech, he has not had Chelsea won the transfer window so dramatically. And those players, while they all turned out to be world leaders, were considered high risk at the time compared to those Lampard has persuaded to join. His is now arguably the best team in the Premier League – one that therefore have to challenge Liverpool and Manchester City.
Chelsea are he buyers in a sellers market. Head above water for a season of embargo, they now swing alone but happily on the surface as other European powers struggle for breath. Four players, Havertz, Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech and Ben Chilwell, bought in four of the most mobile European clubs, and Thiago Silva, pinched free of a giant teammate soon to discover how important it was. It has been an almost perfect business.
Chelsea still have a dazzlingly obvious problem area: the goalkeeper. Cech believes that Kepa Arrizabalaga deserves another chance, and Kepa himself has said that he wants to stay at Stamford Bridge and fight for his place. It would be foolish if he wanted to leave right now.
Abramovich gave Marina Granovskaia the green light to spend an additional £ 150 million on top of the offers from Werner and Ziyech. Having spent £ 50 million on Chilwell and a further £ 70 million on Havertz, they have £ 30 million left for a new goalkeeper. the exact amount Rennes wants for Edouard Mendy. Lampard has the option to replace Kepa; If you decide not to, let it be for your head.
There will still be a predictable excuse, perhaps not from Lampard, who himself didn’t work too hard on Chelsea’s warnings last season. But bedtime in The argument will be used, particularly by its apologists.
But that same mitigation was also valid for Mourinho in 2004-05, more considering that it was its season one, as well as for the multitude of players it brought. The Portuguese manager admitted he didn’t have much ground to make up (Claudio Ranieri had led Chelsea to second place the previous season), but there is at least one other parallel.
Mourinho, like Lampard now, also faced two dominant forces to contend with in the fight for Premier League superiority. Chelsea will not bypass Liverpool and Manchester City as it did Manchester United and Arsenal back then, but the memory of that season, which should be as clear as day for Lampard himself, shows that several new players can settle quickly if the right atmosphere is created.
The most difficult task in creating a dynamic and positive environment will be to ensure that current Chelsea players do not feel marginalized by newcomers. The likes of Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, and Callum Hudson-Odoi have seen direct competition bought into their positions, purchases that are supposed to replace them immediately.
Competition is as likely to breed fragility as it is to improve, and Lampard needs to build on what his young English players have done so impressively. You have to resist the temptation to completely ignore those fundamentals. Lampard himself received no guarantees about his place on the team when millions were spent on foreign players, and no guarantees should be given to this crop of talent that sustained Chelsea and appeased fans last season. All they and the fans will ask of you is that you continue to select the team on merit; there is no reason to suggest that it will not.
Pep Guardiola says the biggest challenge in being an elite coach is keeping the players happy. And that will be an incredibly good balancing act for Lampard. But this is what it is all about, one of the few parts of management that separates the good leaders from the great ones. We’re about to find out which camp Lampard belongs to.
Chelsea have now built themselves close to an infallible team – if Lampard can’t win the title with them, someone else will.
Will ford is on twitter
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