The caretaker manager acknowledges this campaign has been far from what we have become accustomed to at Stamford Bridge - and the likelihood of not being in Europe at all next year is a shock – but he notes it is clearly a period of transition at the club, and focusing too much on short-term outcomes is not beneficial.

When it comes to what the rest of this season holds, including seven Premier League fixtures against teams with plenty to play for, Lampard wants to see high standards set.

‘We now get little bits of period to work,’ he started.

‘People from the outside might write that off and go ‘what does that mean if you’re coming eighth or 12th’, but for me, it means a lot. The challenge for me is to raise performance. Now I have some time to work.

‘In that first hour against Real Madrid individuals and the team were performing at the level we want. We now can’t come away from that level. Brighton wasn’t the level we want. I said that after the game. We can’t be a team that turns up here but not there. We have to be competitive all the way through.

‘There are players who are new here who are getting used to the club, which isn’t easy,’ continued Lampard.

‘We’ve seen some of the greatest players in the Premier League need some time when they first arrive. Sometimes they go into teams who are flying and they get put in and find their feet. So there’s a reason with some of our players there is a bit of transition.

‘In terms of motivation, you’re playing for Chelsea. There are individual motivations throughout all the squad, and there’s a collective. It has to be we are absolutely competitive in everything we do, every day. To get into the team you have to show it.’

Reaching the same heights we have at regular intervals over the past two decades will be made more difficult because of the English top-flight’s competitive nature, according to Lampard.

In the time that remains this season, though, he believes he and his staff can have a positive impact on kickstarting a process that ends with Chelsea challenging for titles once again.

‘The Premier League is moving so fast, and the landscape changes. No team has a divine right to be in the top four. Lots of big clubs have spent time out of the Champions League.

‘To try and predict what will happen is pretty pointless, but we can set the building blocks now of where we want to get to. We want to get back to where we were, but the challenges are big. Everyone is doing the same, everyone is investing, everyone is getting better. Some clubs are more stable than we are in terms of the squad, so we can’t get ahead of ourselves.

‘We have to understand what it takes to get back,’ he added.

‘I know what it takes from being here as a player for a long time. We have to set those standards high again. Only the work of the group and having a clear direction of where we want to go is the way. In my next seven games I will do my mini-version of that. If we can see performances rise it will give the fans some good feeling, and give us good feeling in the summer, which is as far as we can look.’