Frank Lampard has said he does not expect Liverpool’s first league defeat of the season to soften the challenge of facing them in the FA Cup fifth round at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday.
Asked if it is an ideal time to face Liverpool after their surprise 3-0 defeat to Watford on Saturday, Lampard laughed and said: “Why? Because they lost one game? Maybe not, who knows? That can go either way. They have become relatively human for one game. It can happen in this Premier League, which is incredibly competitive. It shows how well they have done in the last year or so, particularly this season. So I can’t comment that it will be any easier.”
For Lampard, the ordinariness of Liverpool’s performance against Watford was a reflection of how exceptional they have been for so long: “Liverpool have just had a couple of results like the rest of us do. They’ve been out on their own this season. It has been an incredible feat from Jürgen Klopp and the whole squad and they have just become slightly normal.”
The focus may be on how Liverpool will react but Chelsea are facing problems of their own. After Saturday’s deflating 2-2 draw at Bournemouth, Chelsea have won one of their past six games in the Premier League, in addition to a 3-0 battering against Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
Lampard continues to be coy on his decision to bench Kepa Arrizabalaga but he spoke soberly of the mounting injuries that now plague Chelsea. Ruben Loftus-Cheek returned to action for the under‑23s on Monday, but N’Golo Kante, Christian Pulisic, Tammy Abraham and Callum Hudson‑Odoi are all out.
“It’s definitely been an issue. Christian Pulisic is out for two months and N’Golo Kante has played 50% of our games and he generally plays 100% of our games or thereabouts. People have looked in slightly different directions with us, with the transfer ban and the youth, [but] this has been a big issue for us.”
Football Weekly
Chelsea’s two encounters with Liverpool this season have brought a loss on penalties after a 2-2 draw in the Super Cup and then a tense 2-1 defeat at Stamford Bridge in September. Rather than with fear, Lampard views Liverpool as a “reference point”.
“I remember them doing the arms [celebration] when they drew with West Brom [in 2015],” he said. “I watched a sports documentary recently where it came up. [They were] probably slightly ridiculed for it at the time.
“But that shows you. To me it is very symbolic of the journey of a team that is an absolute machine rolling everyone over until the last game. It’s a reference point in terms of what a work in progress looks like and it can take time and behind what we can see now is a lot of sweat and hard work from everyone involved, which is what I’m trying to do here.”
