New Chelsea manager Frank Lampard had a pretty rough debut in the Premier League as his side were hammered 4-0 at Manchester United on Sunday. The first competitive match in charge of the Blues for Lampard turned into a disaster on the score board as Marcus Rashford bagged a brace to go with goals from Anthony Martial and Daniel James. Former Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho is now working for SkySports and in this capacity he criticised Lampard after the match, saying that he should have fielded more experienced players like N'Golo Kante, Marcos Alonso and Olivier Giroud instead of youngsters Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Andreas Christensen.
"He didn't like the performance of Mason Mount? Is that what he said? Did he? Wow," Frank Lampard replied in the post-match news conference. "Well, I can't drag players out of the medical room to play if they are experienced or not, so these are the players that played in a game that we were clearly the better team for 45-60 minutes. What was evident that we made individual errors that led to four goals out of their five shots. So there's the harsh reality for us. I don't have to be too concerned about what anyone else says, pundit-wise or anyone, they have to speak. At the same time, what's clear is the squad is what we've got and I believe in it. If we go in at half-time 2-1 or 3-1 up, as we probably should have done if we were more clinical and maybe had a stroke of luck here and there, the game would've been completely different."
Olivier Giroud and N'Golo Kante did come off the bench in the second half, along with new signing Christian Pulisic. This was the worst opening-day defeat for the Blues in their 104-year club history. As for Frank Lampard, he only had a worse defeat as a player, he lost 7-1 to Manchester United while playing for West Ham United in the year 2000. The Blues can recover from this start next Sunday, when they host Leicester at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea are currently 50/1 at William Hill to win the Premier League title this season.
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Comments (1)
Dzile10
08/12/19, 08:08:45 AM
This will be a tough year for Chelsea, Azar left them for Real Madrid. I liked Lampard as a player, I hope he will have a good season with The Blues.
