GLEN JOHNSON: In this week’s blog, Brand Ambassador Glen Johnson on why VAR needs to be turned off and Lampard still working magic at Chelsea.
VAR needs adjusting
There’s obviously been more controversy around VAR this week and while it’s designed to be beneficial to the sport, it simply isn’t getting it right. You can’t have as many mistakes as it’s making and just say it’s teething problems. It’s too inconsistent at the moment and it’s not aiding the game as it was intended to do when it was brought in.
The beauty of our sport is you sometimes get the rub of the green and sometimes you don’t. That’s what makes sport fun and why we enjoy it so much, so with a computer deciding every decision it’s taken away the human emotion from it.
From my perspective, I think the best thing to do is to pull it from the Premier League and re-introduce it once a better, more accurate system is available. It’s just not doing what we were all promised and I don’t see how that’s beneficial to the game.
Top-six should still be the aim for Chelsea
I’m not sure many expected Frank Lampard to start as well as he has at Chelsea, but even though they are currently in the top-four, I still think a top-six finish would represent a fantastic season. The way they’ve started and the position they’ve got themselves in, obviously expectations rise and they could easily get into the Champions League spots, especially with Manchester United and Arsenal blowing so hot and cold. If they can continue as they are and they avoid injuries to the likes of Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham, I don’t see any reason why they won’t finish in the top-four.
Tactics go a long way to winning a football match, but they aren’t the only thing and it’s clear that Lampard is getting tons more out of the players than Maurizio Sarri did. He’s clearly installed a sense of passion and enthusiasm that wasn’t there last season and the team are thriving under it. All of Chelsea’s players are playing with a smile on their face and that comes from the training ground and the manager. He’s got them loving playing for Chelsea again, which can only bring positive results in the long-run.
They lost Eden Hazard in the summer and it was always going to be very tough to cope with losing a player of his quality, but Chelsea’s results this season show how well they’ve done without him. I don’t think the reason they are playing well is that he’s moved on, it’s because of how well the young players are doing. They are the major difference between this side and the Sarri side and Lampard has to be congratulated for getting them to perform so well so quickly.
Most of the big teams have a player like Hazard who is viewed as the ‘superstar’ and when they leave it’s a massive loss to the team and the club. The reason they are such a big loss is because they are in top-form at that time and that’s the reason why the big spenders like Real Madrid come calling. The Belgian showed time and time again how good he was at Chelsea, but with the likes of Mount, Abraham and Ruben Loftus-Cheek all coming through, they look in a pretty healthy position to replace him.
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