Following Saturday afternoon’s 2-2 result against Nottingham Forest at Stamford Bridge, Frank Lampard contrasted his level of satisfaction with each of the halves of the game, while speaking particularly about one player from his attack and one from his defence.
The Blues recovered from going behind early in the game with Raheem Sterling scoring twice after the interval. The second goal was a real moment of quality but Forest equalised just four minutes later and then survived the final half-hour, in the face of plenty of Chelsea attacking, to take a point from their first league visit to Stamford Bridge since 1998.
For Sterling, the goals were his first since we beat Borussia Dortmund back in March, and they make him our equal-highest goal scorer this season.
‘Small gains, small steps forward are important and Raheem’s a player who has credit in the bank as such, as he has been a regular goal scorer in the Premier League and for his country,’ Lampard began.
‘To see him score there was like Raheem – arriving for a cross and then individual brilliance to score the second goal. So I am very happy for him and it is what we need across the top end of the pitch.
‘Raheem has done it and he produced it again, but if you are going to win games when you have 76 per cent possession, you need to be killers at the top end of the pitch. Raheem has proven to be that. At the moment, we don’t have enough of that.’
The other player who fell under the spotlight in our caretaker manager’s post-match analysis was Trevoh Chalobah.
‘Trevoh had a really good game,’ praised Lampard. ‘He was fantastic the way he plays when you ask him to do things. He does them to a tee, he steps in with urgency and he defends well. Physically he is great.’
Turning his attention to the wider team performance, Lampard spoke about the plan before the game and how closely his players adhered to it. This is where the performance before and after the break differed.
‘We knew we are going to have a lot of ball in their half so we have to be really dynamic to move their back-five, we have to make sure our counter-press positions are good, which they were. But what displeased me was the first half, we didn’t do it with enough urgency to break the back-five.
‘We were safe, sideways, and in the second half when we underlapped we got a goal. When we showed urgency in our running forward we get the other goal.
‘We lost 45 minutes in the game when we had all the control and we were not doing things that we said about before the game. It is not good to play at 60 to 70 per cent in the final third, it has to be 100 per cent and it has to be repetitive.
‘In the second half when we showed bits of that in our game, it looked different, it is a game that you want to come and watch. You have to have speed in the last third of the game.’