Chelsea manager Frank Lampard admits that it is not “Ideal” to have to play Joao Felix or Raheem Sterling upfront as he assesses his options ahead of the game against Arsenal.

The interim coach addressed the media at Cobham this afternoon, down below we will look at some of his previously unreleased quotes.

With just a few games of the Premier League season remaining and the side currently on a run of five consecutive losses, fans are desperate to see results and progress however Lampard says that he is “realistic” with how much they can achieve in a short period :

 “I’m very realistic about how much I can change in a short period of time. We’re trying to change certain things; it’s an interesting part probably, which is again why I enjoy the experience of being an interim coach to being a coach with a four-year contract, because there are different ways you have to approach things and different priorities. Are there things we can change to the end? Yes, to improve”

“Will they be shown in results? Not necessarily, because this is the Premier League and we need to improve performance. The reality is also if we are struggling at the top end of the pitch to score goals, I get asked what’s the solution for that and there isn’t an easy one always. Sometimes it’s a hard solution in the summer that will be the answer to that”

“So when you want to fight and go toe to toe with teams you need to be able to score goals in those moments, and that’s something that’s been a problem here for a while and a difficulty for us”.

Frank addressed Pierre Emerick Aubameyang’s situation insisting that it is “on him” to be involved for the remainder of the season but did also praise the striker by saying that the team had a “different feeling” with him on the pitch.

“With Auba, in a short period, it’s been hard for me to gauge that (physical level) but when you see him come on against Brentford you see the different feeling of the team. So I think one thing’s for sure, as I said before, he’s a very high-level player, but clearly in a situation where he’s maybe not at his freshest and sharpest”

“I will want a number nine that I can play off and that we can rely on – it’s not ideal for me to ask Raheem [Sterling] and Joao Felix to play in that number nine. We had to in games against Real Madrid because Kai [Havertz] was missing in one of them. So there’s a lot of things that you have to put together and I don’t think the solution is always as easy as, ‘here’s a number nine, I have to see if they’re ready or not to play”

Lampard was asked whether or not he was torn over playing too defensive or offensive and admitted that he does want to play more free-flowing football :

 “I’m not torn, but I think coming in here the systems have changed a lot, and it hasn’t brought the answer. I don’t think there’s one answer or another – at Madrid I also got criticised going into the game for being too defensive. For me it was the only way to approach the Madrid game and for 60 minutes we could be one or two nil up and the whole tie looks different. Brentford was different, but I mentioned managers having to sometimes compromise earlier – at the moment with where we are there’s things I have to look at and go ‘that doesn’t work properly, so we can’t do that’”

“Do I want to play more free-flowing? Yes. I think when I was here before people maybe thought that we were too free-flowing at times. But I know when I looked at the underlying nature of how we were playing in my first season here, we had one of the highest xG and against us was one of the lowest xG, but we were conceding more goals than we should have done, so there’s different reasons sometimes. In this short term I want to try and find some consistency, but that’s been challenging in the five games because sometimes you’re having to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and it’s not always easy”

Overall, it sounds like Lampard is finding it hard to strike a balance and the lack of time in preparation combined with the huge squad size and expectations are providing him with a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, Graham Potter found this to be the case, too.