Chelsea added a bunch of talented individuals to their team in the summer window and Mendy is one of them. Frank Lampard has begun a new project for the North London club and he has the full backing of the club’s ownership and its management.
Frank Lampard had access to 250 million-plus in terms of funds. When other clubs were facing financial problems Chelsea was on a spending spree. They identified positions that needed strengthening and bought players accordingly.
One key position Chelsea were keen on improving was their goalkeeper. Kepa Arrizabalaga came in for a tremendous fee but did not live up to his expectation. Kepa was largely responsible for some of the close defeats the club suffered.
With that in mind, Frank Lampard was keen on bringing in a new goalkeeper. Chelsea brought in Edouard Mendy from Stade Rennais for a fee of around 21.6 million. The Blues are hoping that the 28-year-old can slot in as a permanent replacement for Kepa.
But there have been mixed opinions on Mendy’s performances with Chelsea. The player has started almost all games in the Premier League. While he has made some good saves there have been some slip-ups too.
He isn’t that comfortable on the ball and is not what you would call a modern-day keeper. There have been questioning marks on his performance against Leeds and Everton.
Pundits believe the keeper needs to learn from his mistakes
The Premier League is one of the most unique leagues in the world. You can never expect what you will get from any opposition. Many players find it difficult to adapt to the atmosphere. However, Mendy made a pretty good start to the season.
In the initial stages, there was a stretch of consecutive clean sheets for Chelsea and their new keeper. He made some good saves and settled in with the team. But as the games started lining up certain areas of his games that are weak started getting highlighted.
This was Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville’s statement as per the Daily Star, “Kepa was a massive problem, every shot that went on the goal looked like it was going in.
“The first six games he had five clean sheets, but in those six games, he only had, I think, eight shots on his goal. What we’ve seen now in the last few games is mistakes starting to build, and he needs a mistake-free night.”
At 28 Mendy is not the ideal candidate for a young team. He had a good impact when he came in but then again any keeper would have had a good impact considering how Kepa was performing.
These last few weeks have been testing for him. Chelsea have tough matchups in the near future and these games will have a key role in determining whether the Blues made a good investment or not.
