You gotta hand it to Lampard though Eirebhoy - for a midfielder his finishing is superb. But if you look at Duff's goal input in the winter nearly every goal he got was the first goal whereas a lot of Lampard's were the 3rd or 4th. I used to slate Lampard but I've had to acknowledge his improvement. Chelsea make up for the lack of a genuine goalscorer upfront by scoring a lot of goals from midfield, wingers & set pieces. If only Ireland could get more goals from midfield.
(Edit: I might add about Lampard that in several games, most notably Portsmouth at home, Lampard was careless in the extreme & only poor finishing let hiom off the hook)
There seems to be a lot of Shaun W-P to Chelsea talk at the moment.
Thankfully, when it really mattered both Lampard & Joe Cole fell short of the standard required. Hopefully the same will apply in WC06, which they've officially already qualified for according to the British press, despite having a home game against the group leaders and two tricky away derby matches to overcome. In fact on paper we probably have an easier remaining route to Germany. Poland are bang in form, France are woefully out of sorts. I'd rather have Switzerland at home than Wales away if I was English.
