Frank Lampard responds to Chelsea mess with honest Roman Abramovich admission
Frank Lampard surveyed the empties from his Stamford Bridge homecoming and admitted it was more fun when everyone hated Chelsea under Roman Abramovich's rule.
After 11 defeats in his last 12 games as a manager, Lampard will probably be hosting another party in the Champions League on Tuesday night.
Unless the Blues procure a miracle against Real Madrid, it will be Chelsea's end-of-season bash: Eight o'clock sharp, dress code blue, no trophies, bring your own boos. A barren season after spending £600 million on players will perhaps install some humility at a club where home defeats were once as rare as comets.
Frank Lampard's Chelsea face mountainous task against Real Madrid (Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)But if being outplayed by Brighton, with a 26-8 shot count in the Seagulls' favour, doesn't ring any alarm bells on Fulham Broadway, there is nobody home in the belfry. Of course, this is not Lampard's mess. He is the fans' darling who was brought home to clear up the debris of owner Todd Boehly's absurd trolley dash.
The moon will turn to cheese before they turn on their beloved Super Frank.
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But where John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho used to bully visiting strikers into submission, Claude Makelele was an impenetrable gatekeeper and Didier Drogba ran amok, this lot are soppier than a Mills & Boon novel. There was only one team on the pitch who would stand a chance of overturning a two-goal deficit against Real Madrid – and it wasn't Chelsea.
Lampard said: “I don’t really care what they think of us as a club I guess. In the early Roman Abramovich years everybody hated us and it was good, we won. Do you know what I mean?
"We want to strive to be that team where people come and have respect for you, understanding what they are going to get, and at the moment we are not giving that.
“I can affect what happens on the pitch. We need to be better, more difficult to play against here, because there is talent in the squad - some of it is young and there has been some change.”
Lampard absorbs the scale of his task as Brighton run amokLampard revealed he has been spending more time holding one-on-one chats with the bloated squad he inherited from Graham Potter earlier this month than tactics. That's a lot of meetings. The poor bloke must have needed throat lozenges by the time he had finished talking with all those players.
He said: “At the minute it has been more conversations and meetings than training on the pitch. Training is walk-through and low-level because of the legs, so I'm talking individually to the players. When we get a chance to work, we will because the team needs that. At this level we have to be on the limit and I am not sure we are. It doesn’t matter how we got here, it has to be addressed now.”
So how long will it take to get the old Chelsea back? The chances of Lampard flicking a switch and the players turning it on against the European Cup holders are slim and none.
Owner Todd Boehly (bottom, left) hears fans' complaintsHe admitted: “I can’t jump into the future. I have to have conversations in the dressing room and not all of them translate outside well. It’s not like who’s doing it and who isn’t. If you get like that it’s a bit finger-pointy so it’s more about what we can do as a group, and if someone isn’t there can we bring them with us?”
Brighton are a joy to watch. After Conor Gallagher's wickedly-deflected opener for Chelsea, they richly deserved Danny Welbeck's equaliser and substitute Julio Enciso's sensational 30-yard winner.
But Albion messiah Roberto De Zerbi still had his own rocket for the Paraguayan teenager, saying: “I think he finished playing after his goal and I don’t want to see like this. He has to think first of all of the squad, the team and then for himself.”
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