Frank By Numbers

We thought it might be interesting to take a close look at Frank Lampard’s distribution in Chelsea’s game against Liverpool at Stamford Bridge. After all he is a key element in their midfield and according to the FIFA vote, the world’s second best player.

Well, surprisingly perhaps, ‘second best’ more or less sums it up. In the first half, Frank made a total of 24 passes – 3 backwards, 10 sideways and 11 forwards. Less than 60% of them were successful in reaching a Chelsea player and of the 10 inaccurate ones, 9 of them were forward passes – in other words, 9 of his 11 forward passes failed to reach their target.

He was significantly quieter in the second half, producing a total of only 15 passes – 6 backwards, 3 sideways and 6 forwards. Once again, all the backwards passes hit the mark and of 6 misplaced passes, 2 were directed sideways and 4 forwards.

In the game as a whole, therefore, Frank produced 39 passes, of which 9 were backwards and 13 sideways – more than 56%. This means that overall, less than 45% of his passes were aimed forwards and of those, 13 – more than 75% - were inaccurate, which to say the very least is disappointing for a creative player.

As for free kicks, corners and shots, he had a few. But then again too few to mention.