Lampard knows defence is biggest threat to his Chelsea reign – and on this showing he better get chequebook out again

CHELSEA show great spirit but continue to be haunted by their defensive nemesis.

The age old threat to Frank Lampard’s reign as Chelsea manager came back with vengeance today in the 3-3 draw at West Brom in the Premier League.

His team went down 3-0 to West Brom inside the first 45 minutes, and it was a case of the return of their nemesis – the lack of ability to defend.

Marcos Alonso was the first to feel the threat of the nemesis and made a ridiculous individual error to gift West Brom the first goal.

But then one man who supposed to be their saviour, Thiago Silva, made just as bad of an individual error to hand West Brom their second goal.

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Silva was made captain on the night, and Lampard was speaking about his experience being vital before the game.

But this backfired as Silva tried but failed to stand up to the defensive issues from last season.

Of course, it is only his second match for a new team in unfamiliar territory; he can certainly be allowed the odd mistake or two.

But this just added to the misery of Chelsea facing up to the reality that it looks very much like they will need to fight their biggest weakness of last season, the leaky back line.

Inside the top ten last season, Chelsea were the club that conceded the most amount of goals, and they finished second.

After adding Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva, and Edouard Mendy in an attempt to help solve those issues – today has shown worrying signs.

The silver lining here of course is that only one of these was playing today.

But is this a problem so far engrained in the club, that it is going to take more than personnel to sort this out?

Whatever it is, it seems to seep through all of the players from the strikers to defenders, and Chelsea’s third goal they conceded emphasised that point.

Shock horror, they failed to deal with a cross and West Brom went 3-0 up.

Lampard’s face said it all as his old enemy came back to haunt him once more.

But it wasn’t all bad on the night for Chelsea, who showed great spirit to fight back and draw the game 3-3.

But even still, Lampard’s face told the story at the final whistle.