Frank Lampard has expressed his disappointment in the way Chelsea conceded goals during their 0-3 humiliation against Sheffield United in Premier League on Saturday at the Bramall Lane Stadium.
“They’re disappointing goals, mistakes that led to goals, individual errors, and if you do that you will lose football matches against good teams. I’ve got to be careful not to over-analyse this one because it’s what you do, analyse all season and review things,” Lampard was quoted as saying on the official website of Chelsea Football Club.
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“What we have to do now with that game is put it to bed because the only thing that matters now is that we fight for top four and we’re still in that race because of how we’ve been this season.
“We have to put this game away very quickly but I learnt a lot, I won’t forget that. You tend to learn more in tough moments and tough games but that’s for me to deal with moving forward,” the Blues boss added.
After two back-to-back wins, which took them to the third spot in the points table, Chelsea produced a horror show in defence and made the top-four fight harder for themselves.
Even though the Blues still remain at the third spot, they can drop down to fifth if fourth-placed Leicester City beat Bournemouth and fifth-placed Manchester United get the better of Southampton. While Chelsea stand with 60 points from 35 matches, Leicester have 59 from 34 matches and United have 58 from 34.
Lampard, however, said that he was not much bothered about the points table. But he admitted that the team cannot approach their remaining matches of the season as they did against Sheffield.
“I’m not actually concerned so much about the top four today, even though all I do is watch the games on TV and consider where we’re at and what we want to do.
“Of course I want to get there but today I’m concerned about how we performed and I learned a lot about that. We cannot approach Norwich or Man United or Liverpool or Wolves in the same way we did today,” Lampard opined.
Sheffield made their intention clear and pushed hard from the opening whistle. They took the lead in the 18th through David McGoldrick before Oli McBurnie made it 2-0 in the 33rd minute. The final nail was put by McGoldrick in the 77th minute.
What was more frustrating from the Chelsea perspective was that all the goals resulted from sloppy efforts by the defenders which could have easily avoided.
However, that did not stop Lampard from praising the Sheffield players.
“They were better than us physically, in the mind and with the ball so you lose the game. They were stronger than us. We don’t have crowds at the minute so you hear every voice and all I could hear was Sheffield United voices so they were stronger in that sense.
“They had more voice and more personality, which reflected in the way they played. They’re good players and they’re a good team – we all know that this season so if you come here and perform below-par collectively as we did, it’s going to happen,” Lampard, Chelsea’s highest-ever goal-scorer, explained.