Frank Lampard has argued that Chelsea were the stronger side on the night, despite the Blues crashing out of the Champions League with a 2-0 defeat to Real Madrid on Tuesday,Chelsea produced a much-improved performance compared to recent weeks and had their chances to tie the game up early on as N’Golo Kante and Marc Cucurella both failed to convert, but they ultimately came unstuck to two second-half strikes from Rodrygo, pushing the Blues onto their longest winless run since February 1995.
Despite the result, Lampard was keen to highlight the positives and insisted there were real signs of improvement from Chelsea.”We played really well for 60 minutes,” he told BT Sport. “And maybe it’s normal, after the goal, 3-0 in the tie, we made some changes to go for it… maybe it’s normal how the game pans out.”But for 60 minutes, really good. Really good chances. At this level, you want to take them. You have to take them. You don’t want to praise the performance too much when you lose, but of course, where we’ve been this season and where we are…
“In this moment, it wasn’t out night. Some players will take that tonight and understand what it is when they come back at this level.”Asked whether Chelsea’s struggles in attack had once again come back to bite them, Lampard admitted: “Yeah. That’s clear, isn’t it?”It’s not for the want of trying. We got numbers in the box, got into loads of crossing positions, so I’ll never criticise the lads for that, but it’s a fact that if you can’t take those chances – the tie goes 2-1 at any point and you’d really feel the crowd turn. The way we were playing, we were moving the ball really well and gave them a lot of problems down the sides of the pitch, which we wanted to. It’s the first game since I’ve been back where I feel we’ve said things before the game and really implemented them. That’s a must for us for the remainder of the season.”
