“They look better that way” – Glen Johnson names his preferred front-three for Chelsea

Glen Johnson has claimed Chelsea become too predictable when they start with Romelu Lukaku. Instead, the former Blues defender wants to see Christian Pulisic, Kai Havertz and Hakim Ziyech lead the attack.

Chelsea signed Lukaku for a club-record fee in the summer and he has not yet impressed. The Belgian got into trouble for an ill-timed interview late last year that saw Blues fans turn on him.

Johnson was speaking to Metro when he named Pulsiic-Havertz-Ziyech as the line-up he would like to see Chelsea play with. The former defender said:

"It depends who you're playing against. I think [Hakim] Ziyech has to be in there. I like [Christian] Pulisic, I'd have Pulisic in there for me and I'd probably have Havertz when he's just wandering around. I just think sometimes when Lukaku is there they're just too predictable and of course for centre-halves you know where Lukaku is so it's not hard to get close to him."

"I just think with Havertz wandering around… he's got to pull defenders out, centre-halves don't want want to move too far out of their slot so I just think they look better that way," he added.

Glen Johnson hails Thomas Tuchel's work at Chelsea

While speaking about Thomas Tuchel, Johnson appreciated how the manager has handled the players so far.

He believes there will be a lot of frustrated players due to lack of game time, but the German has done well to see everyone gets some action on the pitch.

"Only two or three [top players] can play but at the same time they've got an awful lot of games. It's probably any top manager's hardest job in terms of keeping everyone happy so it is a tough job," said Johnson.

"But I'm sure he knows the type of person he's signing so you'd like to think they're good pros and accept when they're not playing and work hard to try and change that for the week later. There's no denying it the players will get frustrated and they will want to see some game time," he added.

The Blues play Plymouth on Saturday night in the FA Cup before heading to Abu Dhabi for the Club World Cup.