Lampard keeping big picture in mind as Chelsea crash out of Carabao Cup

No one likes losing. No one likes losing, especially at Chelsea Football Club. Especially losing at home, 2-1 to Manchester United. Especially when your name is Frank Lampard, club legend and captain on some of Chelsea’s most famous nights. But as much as we want to win every game and every trophy, we must not lose sight of the bigger picture, and the bigger priorities for the club.

“I hate losing, we all do here, but it’s clear that there is a big picture, a lot of games to come and a busy fixture list. Now we just move on.”

Losing sucks. Losing to Manchester United is even worse. Losing a winnable game is even worse than that. But this loss is not one to get hung up on, at least not too much. Sure, it would’ve been nice to win, to keep the winning streak alive. But as far as priorities are concerned, this loss can be absorbed without too many sleepless nights.

That may sounds like revisionism from just a couple days ago, but it’s the only useful approach. We want to win every game. We’re not going to win every game. On the scale of losses, this one we can move on from the easiest.

“We’ve had seven wins on the trot. We’ve had some taxing games in the Champions League and it’s important for the club that we get into the next stage of that competition. We’ve got a few tough games coming up and our form in the league has been very good. It’s quite clear that they are the priorities, let’s get it right. But we want to win football matches, we want to win everything.”

As expected, Lampard rotated the squad, probably more so than Manchester United. Youngsters Billy Gilmour and Marc Guehi got starting chances — and did quite well, to be sure — as did Michy Batshuayi, who popped up with a wondergoal but little else.

The game lacked too many clear chances or quality football, for that matter, but United did seem to have the better of play and that was perhaps the most disappointing of all. Lessons to be learned.

“When it comes to today I have to look at my squad and people who deserve minutes, young players who are going to have big futures for us to get minutes. I think the competition can have an element of that for us but also that we want to win and be successful. There were a lot of things that were good for us in the future, not as much as in previous games but positive things.”

“We weren’t at our best — we were a little slow with our passing in the first half and when a team lines up as Newcastle did here with five and two in front of them, if you don’t break the lines and move it’s tough. We were a little that way in the first half and in the second we weren’t clinical enough. We created chances, changed our game and looked really bright. I loved the first half an hour of the second half and I thought we deserved our goal.”

-Frank Lampard; source: Football.London

Unfortunately, Michy’s moment of brilliance was one-upped by Marcus Rashford’s absolutely ridiculous strike from a free kick. Not much you can do about that. It’s the parts that we can do something about — such as United’s first goal, or Chelsea’s substandard play, etc. — that we need to focus on.