Experiences like City loss great for Blues’ young guns: Lampard

Frank Lampard believes he will learn a lot about his young Chelsea side from how they react to their defeat at Manchester City.

Chelsea’s six-game winning run came to an end as they were beaten 2-1 by the Premier League champions at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.

It is a measure of the London club’s progress under new boss Lampard, who has had to rely on youth due to a transfer embargo, that losing to a side that won the domestic treble last season is considered a disappointment.

“Experiences like this are great for them,” said Lampard.

“They have to take them on the chin in terms of the defeat but also realise these are the kinds of levels we want to get to.

“The feeling in the dressing room -- it looked like they are very disappointed. They expect a lot of themselves, so I think we will take an amount of confidence.

“Where we want to get to means we might come here and win (in future) and it might mean we can win titles, and win going forward, so I like seeing them disappointed.

“I think that that just shows the next question is the reaction we have.”

Chelsea had gone into the game above City in the table and they took an early lead through N’Golo Kante before goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez won it for the hosts.

Lampard admits his side are probably exceeding expectations this term but has warned against complacency.

The former Chelsea and England midfielder said: “It is hard to explain my expectation at the start of the season.

“Until you have worked daily with the players, until you bring players who were playing in the Championship last season and younger players here, you don’t know exactly how it is going to drop and how it ends up.

“So, (I’m) really happy with a lot of our stuff this season, so maybe that means we are slightly ahead of the curve.

“But in football the curve will go downhill very fast if you don’t keep on yourself and take a lot of the lessons from Saturday and take them on moving forward.”

Meanwhile, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is not interested in “bargain” bids for the Premier League club and remains fully involved at Stamford Bridge, according to chairman Bruce Buck.

The Russian billionaire is not believed to have attended a home match since the spring of 2018, having taken Israeli citizenship after encountering visa renewal issues in Britain.

Plans for a new 60,000-seat stadium were shelved around the same time, but Buck said Abramovich has no intention to offload the club.

“So far as I know, absolutely not. To the contrary -- I have never heard a word from Mr Abramovich: ‘Let’s get this ready for a sale,’ or something,” Buck told the Guardian newspaper.

“Because of the political situation, there are people who think they might want to buy Chelsea Football Club at a bargain. We do get enquiries and we really have nothing to say to these people.

“In terms of being involved, in looking at new players, talking about whether to extend players’ contracts, do we buy this player, do we sell this player, (Abramovich) was always intimately involved in that from day one and is just as intimately involved now.

“He talks to Marina (Granovskaia) -- the board member who supervises the football operation -- several times a day, every day. Marina has been doing that for seven or eight years. That hasn’t let up or changed at all.”

Agence France-Presse