Chelsea were thrashed 4-0 by Manchester United in their opening game of the 2019-20 Premier League season.
The Blues did start on the front foot and in all fairness they should have won the game with a similar scoreline had it not been for the woodwork and some decent saves from De Gea.
In the end though, Man United capitalised on their chances and Frank Lampard was left feeling a bit blue.
But dissecting the match, the Chelsea boss told the press that he did find a number of positives in his team’s performances despite then losing the match 4-0.
‘We were clearly the better team for 45, maybe 60 minutes, but what was evident was we made individual errors that led to four goals out of their five shots,’ Lampard said(as per the club’s official website).
‘There’s the harsh reality for us.
‘If we go in half-time 2-1 or 3-1 up, as we probably should have done, if we were more clinical ourselves and had maybe a stroke of luck here and there, the game would be completely different.
‘What I felt on the pitch and in the dressing room afterwards, and although the players are obviously disappointed, there were lots and lots of elements of the game I liked. There were four or five elements I really didn’t like and they proved fatal for us.
‘What the fans want to see, and why they were clapping and very respectful at the end, was because they saw a team trying to do the right thing. The game went against us very quickly when the second and third goals went in, and that was the harsh lesson for my young team today.
‘It was the control of the game. We were intense in our pressure in the first half. For big spells, they didn’t really get out against us.
‘We won the ball back high in lots of areas, be it Mason or Pedro. I thought Jorginho and Kovacic dominated the midfield in the first half and switched the play as we wanted to switch it.
‘But football is won and lost in the boxes. They won in our box by being clinical. We had so many more shots and attacking entries than them, and that was where we let ourselves down by not putting them away.
‘It is quite hard to talk about it after a 4-0, you can sound stupid, but anyone who watched the game will have seen that.
‘It gets overridden by the fact we gave them opportunities to score and they took them.’
Next up, Chelsea will take on Liverpool in the UEFA Super Cup and Lampard will be hoping that his team does not miss so many chances vs Klopp’s men.
