Lampard Warns Spending Amount Doesn’t Equal Good Play
After making headlines all summer with unbelievable transfers, Chelsea FC manager, Frank Lampard, warns that the spending amount doesn’t equate to good play.
The Blues spent over £200 million for Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech, Kai Havertz, and Ben Chilwell. The club was also able to get Thiago Silva and Malang Sarr on free transfers.
Although the spending has been tremendous, Lampard isn’t stopping there. Earlier this week, speculation arose that Chelsea is willing to pay £18 million for Eduardo Mendy. The goal would be for Mendy to come in and replace Kepa Arrizbalaga.
Kepa has been on the outs with Lampard for awhile now. He was looking for a new home earlier this year and has failed to do so. Now he may need to fight for his spot if Mendy is brought in.
The club can loan out Silva and Sarr this season to help with the financial burden.
The new transfers like Werner seem to be promising. However, Lampard is cautious about setting the expectations too high. Chelsea has become a mixing pot of different playing styles with all of these transfers.
“I understand that and I hope Chelsea fans are excited because I am not going to lie, we have brought in a high level of player that we feel will improve our squad,”
Lampard said
“At the same time, I also know what it takes to win Premier League. I know that as a player and I know when I look around.
“When you look at the teams that have dominated in recent years, and your eyes are drawn to Liverpool and Manchester City, they are a story that has run over a few years.
“At their own pace at different times but in terms of recruitment and coaching on the training pitch, it then relates onto the pitch.
“It doesn’t work that simply bringing in players mean you win on the pitch. It doesn’t work that way so we hope we will improve. I know expectations will be there. I won’t hide away from that.
“My expectations are on a different level from last year because we are on a different situation. We want to improve but we won’t jump too far ahead of ourselves.
“The pressure on me to do better than last season should be standard, regardless of anything. And that comes with the territory of this job.
“I don’t want to talk about us making a statement, I understand the players brought in will obviously get a lot of talk about us.
“But for me it was more about, last year we were very happy to achieve a finish in the Champions League positions, we know we’ve been on a transfer ban from the year before, and the fact we were very joined-up on the business we wanted to do, I think we’ve done it in a good way.
“We should be excited, but we should also have a slight word of caution that we need to work with the new players, and my job is to work with the new players to get them settled into the team and get the team working as well as possible.
“We want to move in an upwards direction, of course we do, and the work starts now.
“The work started recently unfortunately it’s been a broken pre-season for everyone, and we brought in new players across that pre-season, you have to work very hard very quickly, and we’ll do that.”
Premier League starts on Sat. Sept. 12. Chelsea’s first game of the season is on Sept. 14 against Brighton.
Ziyech and Chilwell will be absent from the start due to injuries. Silva will most likely miss the game since he is arriving for training camp over the weekend from PSG.
