Frank Lampard, the caretaker manager of Chelsea, has acknowledged that it was immediately apparent upon his return to the team how much "picking up" was needed in terms of morale and confidence.
After Lampard was hired in the wake of Graham Potter's firing, the Blues dropped six straight games across all competitions, including losses to Brighton and Brentford at home.
But on Saturday, Chelsea finally got going with a 3-1 victory over Bournemouth.
Lampard has described the challenges of attempting to motivate the team while the results were still dismal.
It was immediately clear when I entered the dressing room that there was a lot of cleaning up to be done. Unfortunately, you need outcomes to match that in order to keep moving forward, so that's been difficult. With regard to the Bournemouth result, he observed, "It was a great small step forward.
The only way to get over that is to fight and get through it. "The lads are all human. We're all impacted in similar ways when you're not winning games or you don't feel at your best.
I've experienced rough times in my life, so they should definitely enjoy tonight and have a beer, glass of wine, or whatever they choose to do. However, because it's crucial, we can't let up until the end of this season in terms of attempting to make progress.
There's still a lot of work to be done, Lampard had earlier told BBC Sport.
With four games remaining, Chelsea's victory raised them three points outside of the top half of the Premier League standings to 11th. A late comeback helped the Blues finish 10th at the end of the 201516 season after an otherwise terrible campaign. But since 199596, when Glenn Hoddle led them to 11th place in the Premier League standings, they haven't finished in the lower half of the standings.
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