Lampard bemoans Chelsea’s ‘lack of quality’

Boss Frank Lampard lamented a “lack of quality” after seeing his Chelsea side denied victory by a stunning late Brighton equaliser at the Amex Stadium.

The Blues led courtesy of Cesar Azpilicueta’s simple early finish but failed to make the most of a dominant first-half display and Alireza Jahanbakhsh’s 84th-minute overhead kick earned the hosts a point during a much-improved second half.

“It is two points dropped for us because in the first half, if we’re ruthless then the game is out of sight,” Lampard said.

“That’s not to say we had multiple chances, but we had control. We had opportunities to play people in that could score and to make decisions around the box to score.

“Today was a lack of quality on the ball. We had a situation in the first half where we knew the problem for them, we could find our full-backs easily and keep the ball easily but then we just decided not to keep doing those simple things. In general as a team we lost too many balls.”

Lampard was once again left to rue a lack of consistency, with sparkling away wins over Tottenham and Arsenal being surrounded by dismal home defeats against West Ham, Bournemouth and Southampton

He added: “It shows the good and the bad of us so we must remain humble and we must work hard. We’ve had two great results over Christmas but there’s a lot of work to do.”

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