Lampard looking for ‘a few additions’ as Chelsea draw up plans for next transfer window

Frank Lampard has confirmed that Chelsea will be looking to make “a few additions” to their squad in the next transfer window.

The Blues have welcomed no fresh faces into their ranks since a club legend was returned to Stamford Bridge in a managerial capacity during the summer of 2019.

A deal had already been lined up for Christian Pulisic before Lampard took the reins, while Mateo Kovacic had spent a season in west London on loan before seeing that agreement made permanent.

A two-window recruitment embargo had seen Chelsea prevented from doing business immediately after a change in the dugout was made.

Those restrictions were lifted heading towards January, but no movement was seen over the winter.

Lampard has moved to snap up highly-rated attacker Hakim Ziyech from Ajax, with the premature conclusion of Eredivisie action allowing that switch to be pushed through.

The plan is, however, to get more bodies on board before 2020-21 gets underway, with the Blues said to have several big-money targets in mind.

Jadon Sancho, Moussa Dembele and Philippe Coutinho are among those to have generated the strongest links to Chelsea, and Lampard concedes that he will be asking for funds to be made available.

He told Chelsea’s official magazine: "I’m certainly excited about the squad we’ve got, with the young players and if we can get a few additions for areas I feel we need.

"We didn’t bring in anyone in January, it didn’t work out to be right for us at the time, and last summer we couldn’t bring anyone in, so those windows are gone and we haven’t changed.

"So I am excited about the squad we’ve got, if we can freshen up in the right areas we all know that."

Chelsea have shown considerable faith in home-grown talent since seeing their hands tied in the transfer market.

That has allowed the likes of Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori to flourish, but the expectation was that greater experience and depth would be sought once top-four hopefuls with big ambitions for the future were cleared to invest once more.