Frank Lampard on the ‘good things’ Chelsea can take from Bayern Munich defeat

The boss was pleased his youngsters got the experience of facing Bayern

Chelsea's head coach Frank Lampard (EPA)

Frank Lampard was pleased with the endeavour of his Chelsea side in defeat on Saturday evening as they fell to a 4-1 loss at Bayern Munich.

That meant a 7-1 defeat on aggregate and a Champions League exit for the Blues, who were missing a host of players through injury and suspension.

After the game, Lampard pointed to the huge disparity in experience at this level between his side and Bayern’s, and noted that both positives and negatives could be taken from the night – as with the campaign as a whole.

“We performed alright. I’m not ‘happy’, you don’t want to lose the game but [I liked] the resilience of how we got back into the game, at 2-1 we’re fully in the game and competing with a top team,” he told BT Sport.

“When you match the Champions League appearances from ours to their team...they’re a top side. I saw lots of good things but also the bad which we’ve seen this season. Individual errors gifted them goals and, at this level, it’ll finish you off.”

Lampard further noted that he would expect progress again next season, accepting that while acclaim had come his way in part for 2019/20, it wasn’t being measured against the normal standards set at Chelsea over the past decade or two.

“It’s a work in progress, it’s not the norm. We’ve had teams of prime [Eden] Hazard, [Petr] Cech, [John] Terry, [Didier] Drogba, teams competing for the title.

“We know that’s not the case [now], [there are] a lot of players who are young and have developed through the year. People wouldn’t normally commend Chelsea for coming fourth and we want more, but we feel we’ve achieved something; now we don’t want to settle, we want to see where can we improve.”

When it comes to improvement for next season, Chelsea have already started making inroads.

Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner are already signed up, while rumours have linked the club with a move for Kai Havertz and a new goalkeeper, among others.

Lampard says it’s not definite that further moves will be made in the market, but ideally he knows which areas of the team he’d like further recruitment to affect.

“We will look at that because that’s our job. From having a transfer ban you feel we missed [out] where other clubs spent and improved. When you look through the team, in a footballing sense, nights like tonight show me a lot.

“I wouldn’t expect anything [in the market] but it’s our job to go away, see if we can improve. In a football sense I know where we can, so we’ll look at that.”