Kepa Arrizabalaga might lose his spot in the Chelsea team to Willy Caballero for good if he becomes a liability in goal, according to ex-Blues defender, Mario Melchiot.
Mario believes if Willy Caballero continues to perform well he could be the first choice goalkeeper at the club for a long time.
According to him, Lampard was simply fed up with persisting with Kepa who consistently failed to put in solid performances for the club during their shaky period.
He added that Kepa might not be a bad goalkeeper, but he cannot afford to prove himself to be dispensable to the manager.
His words, “As long as he keeps performing.
“We all know Caballero; sometimes he gets too comfortable on the ball and takes too much time.
“I don’t want him to take any risks – just play a simple game, like you expect a goalkeeper to do.
“If he does that, I don’t see how Kepa is going to get his spot back.”
“Frank took a long time and he assessed it for a while
“The defence have also been questioned but now that [Antonio] Rudiger came back, Frank maybe feels: ‘OK, I have now a main focus point. Now I need my goalkeeper to be solid. I can’t have a liability.’
“I was at the game when Ajax turned up (the 4-4 Champions League draw in November) and he conceded a free-kick and I looked at it like, ‘what’s going on?’
“The decision-making and not making the right adjustments – that wasn’t good enough.
“I don’t want to say that Kepa is not a good goalkeeper but you don’t want your goalkeeper to be a liability. Chelsea have never had that – [Carlo] Cudicini, Petr Cech, [Thibaut] Courtois. Good goalkeepers.
“When a goalkeeper gets pulled out of a starting XI, it’s way different than [an outfield] player.”
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