Chelsea tumbled to their fifth defeat in eight games after losing to Leicester City on Tuesday night, a game in which the Foxes were superior in all departments.
It’s left Frank Lampard’s job hanging by a thread, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Roman Abramovich wield the axe in due course.
Lampard’s cousin, and Sky Sports pundit, Jamie Redknapp, couldn’t really believe what he was seeing, and despite the family connection, he let rip after the match.
“You bring in lots of new players, it’s like you’re a kid in a candy shop, you’ve got all the players but who do you pick and where do you play them?,” he said on Sky Sports, cited by the Daily Mirror.
“Players that come in from another country, you’re hoping they’re going to hit the ground running.
“[Kai] Havertz and [Timo] Werner just haven’t. They were two star signings, they’ve struggled.
“There are one or two things that I look at and this will upset Frank more than anything because he was as hard-working a player as I’ve ever seen.
“But one or two of them are a little bit soft.
“You never want to be labelled a soft team, one that doesn’t run enough, that doesn’t work hard, win individual battles.
“That can boil down to confidence, but I look at that team right now and there are one or two of them that are just doing enough and they can’t just do enough playing for Chelsea.”
Though Lampard’s removal could be seen as something of a knee-jerk reaction in certain quarters given that this is the most atypical of seasons, he was always going to be onto a loser if his summer signings didn’t pay off.
Abramovich backed his manager to the hilt, and the oligarch has never been one for sentiment if he feels things aren’t heading in the right direction.
It’s surely only a matter of time before the axe falls.