Former Chelsea interim boss Frank Lampard has revealed the size of the huge squad was the biggest problem he faced on his return to Stamford Bridge.
Lampard took the reigns on a temporary basis towards the end of last season in his second spell as manager for the Blues while they searched for a permanent replacement for Graham Potter.
Mauricio Pochettino was eventually named as the man to fill that role this summer, although it was left to Lampard to oversee the end of a lacklustre 2022/23 campaign, winning just once in 11 games as Chelsea ended up finishing 12th.
But the former Chelsea star told Dragons Den’s Steve Bartlett in his ‘Diary of a CEO’ podcast that the main obstacle he encountered was dealing with the vast number of players at his disposal.
Lampard explained: “The biggest thing about the standards thing was the size of the squad and the motivation of players that you’re not going to play.
“In football, that’s a challenge with 20 players which is a modern squad.
“But Chelsea’s got very big, to the point that I can say – and I’m not criticising that player for dropping standards – but I want to try and get something out of him.
“I would try but when you kind of look at it you go: ‘Yeah, but he’s had this for a long time where he’s not playing so he’s not being competitive with that player who is playing, so that player is pretty comfortable too because he’s not pushing him’.
“And at the minute, for whatever reason, there’s a transition of maybe new ownership.
“You can’t have success without that team spirit and togetherness, but when I got there I could just see that the spirit and togetherness was not there.
“You have to train elite to be elite, but at Chelsea when you did that you’d have to go: ‘Right, if I want to really focus on the 10 or 11 for tomorrow, that means I’ve got to have like 18 players over there’.
“And you kind of saw the body language of some of them and they were like: ‘Again?’ because they have been having it all season.”
