Frank Lampard’s former England team-mate Trevor Sinclair believes Chelsea are a worse side for their big summer of spending.
Sinclair was impressed with how Lampard incorporated young academy graduates into the first team last season
when the Blues were unable to spend due to their UEFA-imposed transfer ban.
Mason Mount made more than a half-century of appearances in the 2019/20 campaign among a host of youngsters
to be given more game time, including Callum Hudson-Odoi and Fikayo Tomori.
Chelsea have gone big in the transfer market this summer, bringing in more than £200m of talent, spearheaded
by German internationals Kai Havertz and Timo Werner.
But after dropping seven points already this season, Sinclair believes the overhaul has unsettled the squad and remains unconvinced whether it will have the desired long-term impact.
“I’m still up in the air with my opinions about Chelsea,” Sinclair told talkSPORT. “I’m not sure which way it is going to go.
“Frank came in at Chelsea and did really well last season, and I thought that the young players that were introduced to the squad integrated really well and put in good performances.
“But this year, since he had that money to spend in the summer…I’m just not sure which way it is going to go.
“You’ve got some quality players in there – Havertz, Werner, Ziyech and so on, but for me they looked like a better outfit last year. There was more spirit about the team.
“It’s going to take a while, I think, to blend the players together.”