FRANK LAMPARD told his Chelsea flops to show some ‘balls’ after a fourth defeat in five Premier League games.
Boss Lampard had no complaints about the VAR decision to award Dan Gosling a shock 84th minute winner which overruled an initial offside decision.
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Instead he says the blame lies squarely at the feet of his players who are turning an exciting season into a sleepwalk for the fans.
Lampard said: “I don’t blame the fans. I’m a Chelsea man and I will be the first one to say the fans were flat today and we needed them. I would be the first, but today I’m never going to say that because if I’m a fan sitting there today, I’d also say that was too slow.
“Centre back to centre back, full back to full back, back to centre back, back to full back. I don’t want to come and see that’.
“So I won’t blame the fans, they come here to support the team, they will come to Tottenham next week, they will come to Southampton on Boxing Day and some responsibility is on the players to excite them, to have the personality and the balls to take the ball in an area and beat someone or play forwards.
“That’s up to the players as well.”
Chelsea won six Premier League games on the spin earlier this season but confidence is now oozing out of the team on the domestic front.
Lampard feared a fall was coming with his young squad.
He said: “I’m disappointed but I think I got asked all these press conferences when we were winning on the bounce about how good we were and how quickly it’s all changed. I was always guarded against that.
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“Whether I’ve been proven right or whatever the best way to put that is now we have the reality that if we’re not at our best, if we haven’t got enough to break teams down that are organised, if players with their individual quality and personality can’t do something to beat teams that are organised then we need to find another way.
“That’s a test and that’s hard work needed for us.
“I don’t like to hang on tiredness. I don’t count Man City, we played well there and lost but when you play against West Ham, who are organised and want to stop us playing, Everton organised and want to stop us playing, and Bournemouth who were particularly organised and deep today and want to stop us playing, we have to find another way.
“We haven’t managed to do that and with that it becomes nerves, it becomes stress in the stadium, within the team, and we haven’t dealt with that well enough.
“If you’re an attacking player get at people, do things that are positive, don’t play safe. We played generally too safe during the game.”
Lampard is particularly worried about the lack of creativity in his team at the moment.
And in a fresh blow, France boss Didier Deschamps has urged striker Olivier Giroud to quit Chelsea in January to save his Euro 2020 dreams.
World Cup winner Giroud has featured in just seven games this season and is third-choice behind Tammy Abraham and Michy Batshuayi.
Deschamps said: “His situation at Chelsea hasn’t changed for two months.
“It would obviously be better for Olivier to go to a club where he gets to play more. If he can’t get games with Chelsea, the idea is to look somewhere else. It will be his decision, but I don’t know what options he has, the possibilities he has to play more.
“We met each other not so long ago. As with every player, he decides. But all the while knowing that it’s the day to day situation France team players have with the clubs which leads to selection. He knows that. It’s down to him to decide with regards to the options he has.”
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