Frank Lampard questions Todd Boehly’s youth-driven recruitment strategy as he explains drop in Chelsea ‘standards’ during nightmare second spell in charge

Chelsea have invested heavily in players in their late teens and early 20s in recent transfer windows since co-owner Todd Boehly took charge at Stamford Bridge. However, the London club continue to struggle on the field as they sit 11th in the Premier League and Lampard, who took over as interim boss near the end of last season, feels a lack of standards is behind their struggles.

"I said it quite a lot when I was there and people threw it back at me, I was like: 'Standards have not been good enough here'. You have to have a level of standards to be a top club. Forget about the tactics of the layer on top, things below have to be right to perform, and I didn't see it there," Lampard told the Unfiltered podcast. "Now, I think in the summer, to be fair, players moved on, some rightfully so for them and for the club, and new players came in. So, I think that probably would have freshened up the feel in pre-season for the new manager... But in my opinion it was going to be a challenge again to keep moving forward quickly like people would expect, and that's proven the case.

"So I think you should be careful to point fingers at the manager himself or point fingers at maybe a young player that's trying to find form in the team that hasn't really got an experienced spine there that they can rely on and look up to certain players. The strategy has been to bring in young players, you've got young kids coming over at 21 from another country, trying to fit into a team. I'm not saying 'in my day' but in my day when you bring in those younger players, they sit themselves on the bench or they train alongside and watch how competitive training is. They watch a Drogba and how they trained or watch a John Terry and how he leads the club and they learn and then they get to the team or they don't come through at Cheslea. To ask a lot of players to do that at the same time and develop is not an easy thing. So I think be very careful, I think the strategy of course will be questioned, and I think there have been things done that you kind of look now and ask if it could have been different, yes."

Despite spending big on the likes of Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku, Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson in recent transfer windows, coach Mauricio Pochettino has not been able to get the best out of his team. They have won just 11 of their 27 league matches, but can still qualify for a place in Europe next season if they manage to win the FA Cup this term.

The Stamford Bridge team will aim to reach the semi-finals of the FA Cup this weekend when they come up against Championship side Leicester. Their next league match is against Burnley on March 30.