Chelsea lost to West Ham United in the Premier League last week and after the match, full-back Marcos Alonso has come under some heavy criticism.
The left-back’s form has dipped this season but since the resumption, he has been getting a fair amount of starts for Chelsea. But on Thursday, Alonso once again had a poor outing at the London Stadium.
He has been receiving a lot of negative criticism since midweek and Gary Neville has been at the forefront of it, saying: “What are you doing, Marcos Alonso? What are you doing? There’s his running back speed – it’s cost Chelsea the game, along with a poor piece of defending from Rudiger.
“Marcos Alonso is level with him at the point where that counter-attack starts and he doesn’t bother. I mentioned it earlier, that’s why he’s under pressure at this football club.
“Frank Lampard will see that. Run back as fast as you can when your team lose the ball, you learn that at age six.”
But Frank Lampard has refused to lay the full blame on the left-back claiming that the team collectively failed to prevent the third goal for the Hammers.
The Chelsea managed said during his pre-match press conference vs Watford: ‘They have a responsibility to do both [attack and defend] and that’s important.
‘We try to play football and be progressive but of course, we don’t do that with the idea of wanting to concede goals. Recovery runs are a huge part of football and the players must do them whether it’s the first minute or the 90th minute.
‘I don’t think it’s quite fair to just look at Marcos in that isolated incident – he can recover and we can recover better as a team but that has to be something fundamental to the team.
‘You have to run backwards as much as you run fast forwards and you have to have that desire to make difficult runs to help the team.
‘I can’t complain about the team with that this year because generally we have a desire to press very well off the ball and when it goes beyond us to recover and get there.’
Frank Lampard has no other option but to defend Marcos Alonso since Emerson has also been really underwhelming as well this season.
So clearly the manager will be looking to add a new left-back to his squad next season but until then, Lampard has no other option but to keep using the deteriorating Spaniard.
