Frank Lampard has suggested that he felt powerless to improve Chelsea's standards and team spirit during the closing two months of the season.
After the dismissal of Graham Potter, Lampard was appointed as manager on a caretaker basis, effectively becoming a stop-gap before the arrival of Mauricio Pochettino.
The club legend was only able to record one win and two draws in 11 matches, with Chelsea losing 4-0 on aggregate in the Champions League quarter-finals soon after his return and ultimately finishing in 12th position in the Premier League table.
With a win percentage of just 9.1%, Lampard's record will be viewed as calamitous, yet it came at a time when the West Londoners had already been struggling under different head coaches.
Furthermore, the club's owners - Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital - had undertaken an aggressive recruitment drive which left the first-team squad with more than 30 players.
© Reuters
In order to bolster Chelsea's position with FFP and streamline Pochettino's senior crop, mass sales have taken place, the latest occurring on Thursday with Christian Pulisic linking up with AC Milan.
There is now optimism that Chelsea will begin to flourish under Pochettino given time, and Lampard has indicated that standards will quickly have to improve if Chelsea are to return to their former glories.
Speaking on the Diary of a CEO Podcast, Lampard said: "Having worked there before as a coach and player, I know the standards. This isn't a direct criticism of the players, because when I look at their situations where they were, and it had been a long year, I walked in with 10 games to go and they'd been there the whole season.
"A lot of players weren't playing, they were probably going to leave, which we're seeing now, and I could see in training the level wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to get a result against whoever you want to say; Brentford at home, let alone Real Madrid. Winning culture starts with basic standards.
© Reuters
"When I got there I could just see the spirit and togetherness wasn't there. It was nothing bad, it wasn't bad to go through the week, but you have to train elite to be elite. You have to.
"The biggest thing about it was the size of the squad. The motivation of players who you're not going to not play, or are out of the Champions League squad, or things like that, it's like asking someone to do all the prep and then have someone else actually do the job.
"I had a short period, so I wanted to try, but when you look at it you think about a player who has had this for a long time of not playing, and he's now not being competitive with the player who is ahead of him. So that other player is probably pretty comfortable too. We took [that competition] for granted in some of my better days at Chelsea as a player."
Also on the podcast, Lampard spoke about the players that he expects to emerge as key men at Chelsea under Pochettino, as well as his desire to have signed Declan Rice from West Ham United.
Darren Plant
