Chelsea head-coach Frank Lampard has expressed his pleasure after his team’s dominating 3-0 win over Watford in Premier League on Saturday. He also praised the performance of the defenders who had put a disciplined show to earn their team a rare clean sheet.
“I’m pleased with the team performance. It was solid, very strong defensively as well. We knew there’d be some longer balls, we knew set-pieces would be an issue, but we dealt with them well,” Chelsea Football Club’s official website quoted Lampard as saying.
Advertisement
The victory was a complete turnaround from Chelsea’s dismal performance against West Ham United earlier this week which had ended in a 2-3 defeat for the Blues.
It also meant that the Blues successfully ended Manchester United’s brief stay at fourth place in the table after they claimed it with their 5-2 thrashing over Bournemouth earlier on the day. Lampard’s Londoners now have 57 points, while the Red Devils have 55. Leicester City with 58 points are at third.
“I think every game’s going to be pressure now. At West Ham, there was pressure because we knew we could go third. It’s a different kind of pressure but it’s still the same. It’s how you focus on the game and the job in hand, we cannot get too caught up with what everyone else does at the moment and we did that well,” Lampard
said.
“There was no-nonsense, the mentality was good, we started bright and carried on and got the small details of the game right at both ends of the pitch, which I was pleased with,” the former Chelsea midfielder added.
That Lampard’s men were determined to get back to the winning ways was evident from the first whistle. Chelsea outplayed Watford in every department while Olivier Giroud, Willian and Ross Barkley scored at the empty Stamford Bridge.
Lampard brought four changes into the squad with Kurt Zouma, Reece James, Olivier Giroud and Mason Mount starting against Watford. Both Zouma and James produced a disciplined performance as Chelsea’s defense managed a rare Premier League clean sheet.
Meanwhile, Mount proved to be the most important player in the midfield with his astute runs and inch-perfect passes. Giroud, on the other hand, did not disappoint either and showed why Lampard had given him a contract extension.