They lack the right balance but there's a good team in there somewhere. Martin Tyler's remark towards the end of the game yesterday about Chelsea being a team of extreme highs and extreme lows was spot on. The sooner Lampard stops thinking he's playing FM, the better his side's chances of attaining a top-four spot will become.
To make a long story short, Chelsea look on top of their game when their energy levels are full and each one of the ten outfield players is fighting for every possession thus allowing them to retain any semblance of compactness on the pitch. But no team can do that for 90 minutes. The question is how do you choose to cope with that. Normally, you can either control the procedures with good spells of possession or you can soak up the pressure and hit on the counter. Or do a mix of both (like RM on their better days).
There's a lot of wishful thinking currently in Lampard's set-up. In the age of overlapping FBs, the choice to deploy to players on both wings who are suspect in their defensive duties is screaming that you're asking for trouble. With their available options in the forward position, Mount's ability to find pockets of space in between the lines will come in handy when it comes to finishing attacking moves but, on the other hand, the problem with the youngster is that he's not offering anything else on the pitch. An extra body in the midfield battle? Play-making abilities? Ball distribution? No. And with forwards that rarely get involved in generating moves, this can prove to be a problem for Chelsea because they need both Pulisic and Pedro closer to the box and not in wider positions trying to make things happen.
Going a bit deeper in the midfield, Jorginho can offer a couple of pretty good things on the pitch but screening the back-four on his own and acting as a play-maker when Mount is playing closer to the forward than to the rest of the midfield is not among them. With Emerson pushing so high and with the triad behind the forward being overly attacking-minded, all you get in the end is Kante running like crazy up & down the pitch trying to either carry the ball forward or fix all sorts of defensive holes when Chelsea lose possession with 7 or 8 players in the attacking half. I'm saying this because Lampard seems to believe that Jorginho should be a crucial cog in the wheel of what is Chelsea's build-up but his other choices in the starting xi indicate that he still treats the role in front of the back-four like a prime Matic (extremely important in both Chelsea's last PL titles) is still playing there. Jorginho doesn't possess any holding midfielder qualities in his game.
And finally, you have the defence which apparently will be okey-dokey when Rudiger returns. Trust me, it won't, if the system requires them to do so much defending. I know it sounds ridiculous but it's not. In a high risk - high reward formation, defenders who possess the urgency to defend in front of the attacker and the agility to cover the wide areas which are left open by the attacking FBs are essential. Chelsea don't have defenders who are that good in this area. It's not that they are bad defenders, more like they're not good at this kind of (demanding) defending. It's a bit like the Smalling conundrum... limit his area of responsibility to 1v1 marking and clearing crosses and you get a good option at the back. Ask him to read the game and do some proactive defending while the midfielders surge forward... that's when the problems arise.
Lampard expects his team to win every match in the 20-30 minutes of the game when their engines work in full capacity. But the end product is not good enough to give them a healthy lead during this period and his choices leave Chelsea very exposed when the opposition manages to settle into the game. We saw it in the first two league games, we'll see it again. When both United and Leicester turned up the volume, Chelsea could neither control the game or defend efficiently. I guess that a reversion to 433 with the introduction of both Kovacic and Willian (it's not like they have a plethora of options) in the starting lineup will turn them into a more cohesive unit.