Frank Lampard admits confidence 'clearly an issue' for Chelsea before Arsenal clash

Chelsea caretaker boss Frank Lampard has conceded that team morale is a serious issue for his squad at this point in the season.

The Blues have lost their last five games in all competitions and are on a run of eight without a victory, Two points from their last six Premier League games has seen them fall to 12th in the table and they face the daunting prospect of a trip across London to face title contenders Arsenal on Tuesday.

Since the latest defeat, a 2-0 loss at home to Brentford, numerous reports have emerged stating Chelsea's dressing room are at an all-time low. And while Lampard was reluctant to validate such extreme claims, he did confess that confidence is a real issue.

“We’re not in a great moment," he began. "We have to put perspective on it. We have to work on all aspects as a club to get back to the feeling and position of where we want to be.

“Our job is to work on performance and mentality of the group, to try bring back a good feeling. I was very aware of the challenges. The reality of football is, your career will not be full of successes. You can’t always control results, but you can control how you work every day.

“They are low on confidence and also low on performance, so I shouldn’t make it all on confidence. You can only work to get a level of performance to then bring confidence back. Nobody likes losing games. I had moments here as a player where we dropped as a collective, and we had to lift it. We managed to get it back through hard work, level of the squad. We changed manager a lot in some of those periods.

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“It’s different now - the modern player, squad that we have, what expectations are. The only thing we can do is consider the moment now and future as a club. Work hard to get the squad where we want it, also to get the players performing so that confidence word is a not a big word like I’m using in my press conference every week. At a club like this, you should work hard, you shouldn’t be talking about team confidence. It’s clearly an issue at the minute which needs to be addressed. It only gets addressed with self responsibility to make it better."

Lampard went on to compare Chelsea in their current form to the beginning of Mikel Arteta's time in charge of Arsenal, highlighting the challenges of beginning a new era and the need for patience.

“It’s interesting to compare the Arsenal story," he said. "We all had a little insight in the Amazon series. When you see what they are producing now... there is a long process to get to where you want to get to.

“I remember playing against Mikel’s teams in the early stages, now they have a very, very clear identity, clear recruitment, changed of squad. There has been a lot of work to that, through Mikel, alignment and good recruitment.

“Do we have the possibility to do that? Yes. Will it take a lot of time and good decisions along the way? Absolutely yes. You can get there. It’s a credit to Arsenal. The manager, owners and players were being questioned. That process can take two or three years, which it has done. Within that, you have to make a lot of right decisions. It’s great to see a club stick with a manager when maybe at another club they may have changed a manager two or three times."

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On this edition of Talking Transfers, part of the 90min podcast network, Scott Saunders, Graeme Bailey & Toby Cudworth discuss Chelsea's likely appointment of Mauricio Pochettino, the carnage at Tottenham and Harry Kane's next steps, David de Gea and Harry Maguire's Man Utd futures, Lionel Messi's impending Barcelona return & more!

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