Darren Bent claims Frank Lampard has been playing N’Golo Kante in completely the wrong position during the past two Chelsea games.
Chelsea are on a five-game losing streak since Frank Lampard returned as caretaker manager, including recent defeats against Brentford and Real Madrid.
Most Blues fans will have noticed something quite odd about N’Golo Kante’s positioning lately.
The £30million star (BBC) has been regarded as one of the world’s elite central midfielders for many years now, but we’ve seen him a lot higher up the pitch than usual in losses against Brentford and Real Madrid.
Lampard’s recent tactic has been to start a midfield diamond of Enzo Fernandez, Mateo Kovacic, Conor Gallagher and Kante, which does leave room for just one out-and-out attacker in the starting line-up.
We’ve seen Kante operating as an attacking midfielder lately, often popping up high up the pitch on the right wing.
However, talkSPORT pundit Darren Bent has blasted Lampard for the tactic.
When discussing Kante, Bent told talkSPORT: “To play him up front… Kante’s biggest strength is in winning back the ball, the engine that he’s got, and playing it simple. Not scoring goals.”
Kante’s offensive game has improved over the years and he dribbles very well. There’s no way he’s got the skillset to be effective as an inverted winger, though.
We love to see the 32-year-old Frenchman driving through the centre of the pitch from midfield, but he’s not had the chance to do that in the past two games.
Hopefully, this mini experiment is over from Lampard.
In our view, we want to see proper wingers such as Noni Madueke and Mykhailo Mudryk in the XI.
Kante’s been the individual getting into the best goalscoring positions lately and he’s fluffed his lines. Lampard must take his portion of the blame for this!
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