Manchester United’s FA Cup game against Brighton yesterday meant a change of plans for Chelsea, who will have had a week after their Champions League games to lick their wounds and prepare for a 7 game trudge to the end of the season.
After Wednesday’s game, there’s another week off to work, a rare pleasure after a couple of packed years.
Still, there is value to be had in this final run, and here we speculate about what Lampard might have done with this week off.
- Figure out which players he wants to use. For him this will simply be the players most likely ot get a result, but he also has to think about the limited value of using players likely to leave in the summer.
- Get the team’s spirit and enthusiasm back. They have looked short of confidence and optimism all year – they need to understand they’re playing for their futures in many cases, but this has to be made a positive rather than a negative.
- Figure out the goalscoring. Lampard constantly refers to “work” being the only solution to the goal drought, and he finally now has some time on the training pitch to do it.
