Frank Lampard Blames Players for Poor Performance
Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has placed Saturday’s London derby defeat to a struggling Arsenal side on the entire Chelsea players. Lampard made no secret of his dissatisfaction with his players following his side’s 3-1 defeat to Arsenal.
Arsenal last won an English Premier League in November against Manchester United. Alexandre Lacazette’s penalty opened the scores then Granit Xhaka doubled the lead before Bukayo Saka put Mikel Arteta’s side 3-0 up.
Chelsea improved as the match drew to a close, with Tammy Abraham pulling one back. Frank Lampard and his men managed to grab a penalty in the first minute of stoppage-time but Jorginho missed it.
Frank Lampard spoke very frankly on his team’s poor performance when he was asked to assess how his side played. He said: “I can’t defend the first half because they lacked the basics of football.”
Lampard also said: “The message was clear to the players. It was to be a tough game against a team that’s fighting, a team of quality, a team that would give everything for a London derby.” “The players have to take responsibility for that first half.”
When asked why Chelsea didn’t perform, Lampard said: “I can’t answer that because some things you can reflect on in terms of tactics, preparation and all these things but in terms of effort it’s something that just has to be a given in football. The players got it wrong.”
He also said: “I’m not going to sit and complain about that [fixture scheduling] after the way we’ve played. So yeah, it needs to be put right.” “Some places, it certainly does. We’ll need some freshness, some people who deserve to play to show they can play on the maximum, on the limit because the Premier League demands it.”
“You can make games easy for yourself if you want to start well and we’ve had some games like that this season. Today we made it very tough for ourselves to come back.”