Frank Lampard explains to Mauricio Pochettino his first responsibility as Chelsea manager.
Frank Lampard took over as Chelsea temporary manager last season after Graham Potter was fired, and he has a message for the man who has followed him through the door.
Frank Lampard has described Mauricio Pochettino's first challenge as restoring "spirit and togetherness" at Chelsea.
The former Stamford Bridge manager has mentioned a bloated squad and a season that fizzled out as big drags on motivation at the club in the last year.
Lampard, 45, took over as temporary manager when Graham Potter was fired in April but failed to make an impression, which he attributes to a mentality that existed before he arrived.
Pochettino has been named permanent head coach and has begun a major squad trim and rebuild. Lampard told Dragons Den star Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast that he understood the club was in jeopardy despite having a £660 million squad.?
"When I got there, I could see the team spirit and togetherness were not there," he stated. It wasn't horrible, but to be elite, you have to train exceptional.
"The minute we didn't get past Real Madrid, you're in that end-of-season zone that isn't typical at Chelsea." We should be playing for something at Chelsea. We didn't play for much, which is why motivation was low."
Chelsea's first-team squad had more than 30 players to keep pleased last season, thanks to their new owner's shopping spree, including £106 million midfielder Enzo Fernandez and £88.5 million winger Mykhaylo Mudryk.
"The biggest thing about the standards thing was the size of the squad and the motivation of players you're not going to play," he stated. In football, that's a difficulty with a modern squad of 20 players.
"But Chelsea has grown to the point where I can say, and I'm not criticizing that player for dropping standards, but I want to try and get something out of him."
"I'd try, but when you look at it, you think, 'Yeah, but he's had this for a long time where he's not playing, so he's not being competitive with that player who is playing, so that player is pretty comfortable too because he's not pushing him.'"
"I could tell in training that the level wasn't high enough." It wasn't enough to get a result at Brentford, let alone against Real Madrid. When I first arrived, I realized that some players believed the season was coming to an end.
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