Blameless Lampard haunted by Tuchel warning as Todd Boehly’s Chelsea crash out of Europe

Chelsea’s Champions League exit is pinned on Todd Boehly (fair enough) and things Thomas Tuchel said a year ago (not so much) but absolutely not Frank Lampard.

Todd warrior
Operation: Save Bambi is in full swing across the fourth estate this morning after Frank Lampard’s Chelsea suffered a fourth straight defeat since his inexplicable return to the Stamford Bridge dugout.

A self-preservation of a team clearly picked with a dignity-sparing 0-0 that suited everyone and snapped his losing streak in the most ‘technically’ fashion imaginable was clearly the aim and we’re beyond certain any other manager on earth would have got at least a little bit of criticism.

Unable to offer any real defence of their man, the big-name opinion writers have generally opted for barely mentioning Lampard at all.

We understand – and agree with – the widespread assertion that Todd Boehly is the greatest problem and main reason for Chelsea’s current predicament, but are still struggling to think of another example where a club is so routinely referred to as the chairman’s rather than the manager’s. There are countless examples of ‘Todd Boehly’s Chelsea’ in the various post-mortems, vanishingly few of ‘Frank Lampard’s Chelsea’.

Oliver Holt’s piece for the Mail is broadly decent and suitably scathing of a club in full meltdown shambles mode, but only after nine lengthy paragraphs does he finally get around to mentioning Lampard by name, and even then it’s to assert ‘this defeat was not his fault’. A sentence that, like so many written about Lampard this season, appears to be missing an ‘entirely’.

‘Todd’ and ‘Boehly’ are the fourth and fifth words of the piece; ‘Frank’ and ‘Lampard’ 392nd and 393rd.

Frank analysis
The pieces themselves aren’t even that bad, but it’s still striking how nobody is pointing any kind of finger at a manager who has now won one of his last 18 matches and lost four out of four since returning to Chelsea. And also how the widespread and justified criticism of everything Todd Boehly has done always seems to stop short of highlighting his most baffling decision of all: bringing back Lampard.

‘Frank Lampard has done all that could be expected of him’ – Martin Samuel, The Times

‘Chelsea have now lost four games in succession since Frank Lampard took over as caretaker manager but this defeat was not his fault’ – Oliver Holt, Daily Mail

‘Ancelotti responded by sending on former Chelsea general Toni Rudiger in place of David Alaba in order to beef up Real’s defence. It was a doff of the cap to Lampard’ – Dave Kidd, The Sun

Warning signs
It might seem pretty obvious why Real Madrid beat Chelsea. Real Madrid are infamously brilliant at Champions League football, while Chelsea are in a complete mess regardless of how you choose to apportion blame between Boehly and Lampard or whoever.

But the Mirror have spotted the real reason.

‘Thomas Tuchel’s warning to Chelsea comes back to haunt Frank Lampard against Real Madrid’

Right. What was this ‘warning to Chelsea’ then? Regular readers will be astonished to learn it is in fact not ‘to Chelsea’ or indeed a ‘warning’ of any kind or indeed remotely relevant. Or haunting.

What Tuchel did after last season’s defeat to Real Madrid while he was Chelsea boss was moan about Carlo Ancelotti being friendly with the referee. It was tish and fipsy at the time, reeking of sour grapes and very much more ‘excuse’ than ‘warning’.

Here’s what Tuchel said, right after a defeat 12 months ago when he could not possibly predict Chelsea – with or without him – would be playing Real Madrid again a year hence.

“I was disappointed that the referee had a good time with Carlo. When I wanted to go and say thank you, he was smiling and laughing with the opponent’s coach.

“I think this is the very wrong time to do this after the final whistle, 126 minutes of a team giving their heart. When you go and see a referee smiling and laughing with the other coach, it’s bad timing. I told him this.

“[It’s] not only today. When you play against Real Madrid, maybe you don’t expect everyone has the courage. I felt the little decisions in the first leg and today as well. I didn’t see the goal but I am super disappointed he didn’t come out and check it on its own. You should stay the boss and not give the decisions to someone in a chair and who is isolated.”

Just not a warning is it? Just a bit of post-defeat grumpiness and mild conspiracy theorising isn’t it? Nothing much of anything at all really, is it?

Still, if you’re going to bring up this weak sauce as a ‘warning’ that came back to ‘haunt’ Lampard and Chelsea, then surely you can at least point to the significant decisions that went Real Madrid’s way in this tie?

‘It must be noted that Ancelotti’s side did not gain any kind of advantage from beneficial calls from the officials on the night, as Madrid brushed Chelsea aside to win 2-0 at the Bridge and 4-0 on aggregate.’

Noted.

Gob off
We unapologetically love tabloidese, the unique language of newspapers full of words and phrases that literally no human being would ever say out loud but are for whatever reason – and that reason is often brevity – standard practice in tabloid English.

Dave Kidd is a master of tabloidese and we genuinely mean this as a compliment because there’s an undeniable skill to it. His Chelsea analysis contains some classics, most evocatively in a description of Chelsea fans’ abuse of Thibaut Courtois described as the keeper being ‘loudly accused of one-in-a-bed romps’. But also in reference to Brighton having ‘trousered’ a £62m transfer fee for Marc Cucurella.

There was also, though, what we think is a new coinage to get round the tabs’ long-standing and frankly baffling squeamishness around swearing, with reference to Boehly as ‘an American gob artist’. We’re open to correction here, but don’t think we’ve ever heard that one before and we rather like it. And we all know what Kidd really means.

One of these things is not like the others
Small beer, this, but it’s a sentence from The Sun that has genuinely baffled us in a story that attempts to make Christine Lampard (‘She did her best to support Lampard and looked elegant wearing a black top and blazer paired with jeans’) the main focus of Chelsea’s defeat to Real Madrid because of course it does. Anyway, the sentence we’re interested in is this one.

‘They are currently 11th but with games against Manchester City, Bournemouth and Newcastle to come, they could slip further down the Premier League table.’

Now we’ve nothing but respect for Bournemouth’s spirited and now very likely successful fight against relegation, but… it’s a bit much to include them in a list of worrisome fixtures for Chelsea alongside the more obvious perils of City and Newcastle, isn’t it? Especially when Chelsea also still have to play Arsenal and Manchester United.