Ryan Giggs said Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has struggled with a defensive selection dilemma ahead of Saturday’s trip to Manchester United.
The game at Old Trafford will be a battle between the two teams who are hoping to sneak into the title race this season, having finished in third and fourth-place last season but with quite a gap from Liverpool and Manchester City.
And they have been plagued with a few similar problems: often having to outscore their opponents to secure the win due to their brittle defences.
This particularly applies to Chelsea, who have had a few highly-rated attackers join their ranks in the form of Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Hakim Ziyech.
Giggs argued that, despite the threats Chelsea pose offensively, United will still be able to punish their defensive line.
He told Webby & O’Neill YouTube channel: “Chelsea are a weird team. They’ve had a clean sheet, they’re a dangerous side going forward but obviously you can get at them at the back.
“As long as we negate their offensive options then I think we’ll score goals.”
Giggs also suggested that the centre-back pairing inconsistency at Chelsea is partly to blame for their defensive problems.
“Frank looks like he’s got the same problem as us, he can’t get that partnership quite right,” he added.
“It’s a similar problem that we’ve got really. The centre-halves, we’ve seen it through the years – [Gary] Pallister and [Steve] Bruce, [Nemanja] Vidic and [Rio] Ferdinand – you’ve got to have that solidity at the back and then it goes through the team.”
Although that was certainly the case last season, Lampard might have found his go-to centre-back pairing in Kurt Zouma and Thiago Silva and has gone with them when they were both available.
The Chelsea boss might consider rotating his five centre-backs given this season’s busy schedule but, for an important game like the one at the weekend, you would expect Zouma and Silva to start again.
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