Lampard lauds Chelsea’s small step forward, several excellent individual performances

It felt like Chelsea might never win a game, but we finally got one! I know! It may have taken ten tries across all competitions, but at long last we were able to celebrate a final whistle in earnest.

It’s also Frank Lampard’s first win since his return as caretaker manager last month, and his first win in forever as a manager after ending his Everton stint with a long losing streak as well (the count was up to seven straight Premier League defeats).

Celebrating a win against Bournemouth with anything more than a golf clap and a nod of the head feels extremely small time, but perhaps we need to release some emotion after such a horrendous run.

“When you’re not winning games, or if you don’t feel like you’re at your best, and the only way to get through that is to fight and to get through it. In this period, it will be the challenge on the players that will make them stronger or better as they go on.

“Absolutely they should enjoy tonight and have a beer or wine, or whatever they do. [...] I’ll have one on the coach now (laughs). Not too many.”

Promisingly, it wasn’t just the result that favored the correct side on the scoreboard. Chelsea’s performance was more coherent, controlled, and at a few points almost clinical, even, than we have seen in recent weeks — including several impactful individual efforts from the likes of Noni Madueke, Conor Gallagher, and Benoît Badiashile, all three of whom were called out by Lampard.

“Today was a small step forward. I thought we controlled a lot of the game. Bournemouth will always give you problems here – they’re a good team. You never feel safe at 1-1 but I think we controlled it a lot. Maybe a sign of us controlling it in the first-half without the killer instinct.

“We were running inside of their box a lot in the first-half. We had a lot of overloads on one side of the pitch. As this team develops, or as we add to the squad, you have to be killers at the top-end of the pitch. If you look at the top-half of the table, that’s what there is all across it. At the moment we haven’t got that but you saw nice individual performances today and it’s a step in a positive direction.”

“[...] today you saw individual performances in Badiashile, in Conor Gallagher, in Noni Madueke and other players in the team, so that’s a big step forward because these are individuals who will be part of the team going forward probably. That’s a good sign.”

-Frank Lampard; source: Football.London

Onwards and upwards!