Frank Lampard hopes Chelsea have learned a lesson from last season’s Champions League campaign ahead of their clash with Sevilla.
Frank Lampard is eager to see his side put out a better outing in the Champions League this season compared to the last term.
On their return to Europe’s elite club competition in 2019-20, the Blues finished second to Valencia in the group stage. Following that, they suffered a massive 7-1 aggregate to eventual winners Bayern Munich in the last-16.
After conceding a last-gasp equalizer in Saturday’s 3-3 Premier League draw with Southampton. The Blues open their Champions League campaign at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday. Their opponents are no walkover as Chelsea will welcome last season’s Europa League winners in Sevilla.
Lampard’s expectations for Chelsea.
Lampard is eager to see his side learn from last season and put the lessons learned to good use this time around.
“It is a great platform to learn because you are playing against the best, we played against the best in Bayern Munich and it shows you the quality levels,” the Chelsea boss said to the club’s website.
“We were a young team last year, working a lot to improve, and the Bayern game was a great marker for the young players in the squad to realise the levels that need to be attained. I remember having that myself as a young player.”
“Getting through the group was also difficult for us, having lost the first game [against Valencia] – so we had to show a lot of discipline and focus to get through hard matches at Ajax and Lille. So hopefully there have been lot of lessons learned from that period.”
Lampard added: “I remember the first leg [against Bayern] very well, we didn’t play particularly well in the first half but had opportunities to score. Then in the second half they scored goals very quickly and made the tie difficult for us.”
Chelsea have only won one out of their last nine games with Spanish opposition but Lampard isn’t bothered by that.
He concluded: “I mentioned before about concentration, focus and discipline and that becomes even more important here than other competitions because of the level of Champions League. That’s what I would always make very clear to the players going into a match against someone of the quality of Sevilla.”
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