Frank Lampard spoke to reporters on Friday ahead of Chelsea’s match against Watford. The Blues boss was asked about a number of issues. Here are five key things we learned….
Mateo Kovacic is out injured
“Kovacic is going to be out of this game. He hurt his Achilles during the West Ham game and will miss this one and possibly the one after that. Hopefully it won’t be too long after that.”
Fiyako Tomori is still unavailable
“Fikayo’s still not fit. He’s hopefully going to be training with us some time next week.
“He’s been doing a lot of work. The last bit to get him on the training pitch has been tough.”
Lampard is sticking by Marcos Alonso
“It’s much easier to comment from afar.
“I don’t think it’s quite fair to just look at Marcos. In that isolated incident, yes, he can recover and we can recover better as a team.
“But that has to be something fundamental to the team. You have to run backwards as much as you run fast foward.
“I can’t complain about that with the team this year. When you isolate one goal because it’s so crucial it wins the points, fair enough, but I know that with my player that generally we have a desire to press very well off the ball.
“It was a game where we slipped up – not just that mistake but other mistakes – and we lost the game for it.”
Lampard is “not aware” of talks to sell Emerson Palmieri to Inter Milan
“What I am doing is focusing on the team and the squad day to day.
“I don’t have any real conversations about the transfer window, whether it’s about who we might bring in or who might leave the club.
“Those are obviously questions we’ll need to answer come the end of the season when the window opens, but I certainly don’t want to be swayed by rumour or gossip.”
Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech haven’t arrived yet
“They haven’t arrived. As the whole country is waiting on quarantine news, we’re also waiting on quarantine news to make sure the players can travel and be able to move around and work.
“With Timo Werner, he’s only finished (the season in Germany) recently so he’s having a break at the minute – well deserved – and will come back later on in July.”