Chelsea Boss Frank Lampard has hinted that he is looking to sign a Virgil Van Dijk type player in the transfer window?
However, The loss against West Ham has shown man in the game that Chelsea are not quite ready to challenge for the big trophy, and that Lampard needs to add a big, powerful John Terry-Type player to the back-line.
HE SAID: ‘We have looked at set-plays this season,’ ‘When we came into the club we looked at the stats from last season and last season we were bottom of the league in terms of defending set-plays and in terms of other teams getting big chances against us. We were second bottom in attacking [with set-plays]. We looked at that and it is not a reference to last season only as we haven’t improved much this year.
‘If you look at personnel, I really don’t like to talk about my days playing but we didn’t really work so much on set-pieces. We did with certain managers more than others and probably there were a few reasons why but they were mainly John Terry, Gary Cahill, Didier Drogba, Michael Ballack, Branislav Ivanovic. You stick it in an area and they would defend it or score goals.
‘Similarly with Liverpool, I remember a lot of talk about them defending set-pieces two or three seasons ago. They were zonal, they conceded a lot, they signed Virgil van Dijk and he heads out everything that comes into the box.
‘So there is a huge relation to personnel and if you don’t have that in terms of a big size across the team, trying to compete as hard as you can and make it difficult for other teams to score is the main thing.
“I am not making an excuse when I say this as we have not done that well enough on the pitch and that has to improve. When you look at who you might bring in, and the balance of the squad, in the modern day it is certainly something to take into account when you are looking at recruitment.”
Liverpool signed Van Dijk and he immediately improved that back-line to make Liverpool Champions, and if Chelsea want to get back into the habit of winning big trophies, that is what they need to do as well.