Frank Lampard: how summer spending spree cost him Chelsea job last time

Nicholas Hughes

• Updated: 6 Apr 2023 16:12 BST
• 2 min read

Frank Lampard's reign as Chelsea manager came to an abrupt halt in January 2021. His dealings in the transfer market were a large part of the reason why.

The former Blues midfielder spent over £200 million in the summer of 2020 on transfer fees alone, while also adding Thiago Silva on a free transfer.

For the most part, those arrives were failures under the former midfielder, particularly in the forward areas.

Edouard Mendy, Ben Chilwell and Silva all helped shore up what was a leaky defence last season, but the heavy-hitters up front failed to hit the mark.

Arriving with big expectations and immediately placing Chelsea among the title-contenders, Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz managed just six goals and nine assists between them across a combined 45 appearances in the Premier league.

Ziyech was too inconsistently available with niggling injury issues, Werner was wasteful in front of goal and Havertz has never looked like a Premier League-level No.9.

Werner in particular was seen as being a major coup for the club having seemingly beaten Liverpool to his signature, but the fact that both Tammy Abraham and Olivier Giroud had as many or more goals as the German in all competitions before Lampard left proved his woes.

Lampard’s hire at the club coincided with a ban on transfers and the loss of talisman Eden Hazard, leaving him rather hamstrung in the market when he first arrived.

But when given the licence by Roman Abramovich, he failed to deliver in the transfer market and paid the price of his job as a result.

The Blues won just twice in their last eight league games under Lampard and were ninth on the table when he left, although they had reached the last 16 in both the FA Cup and the Champions League.

Lampard's successor Thomas Tuchel got the best out of some of those players - Havertz scored the winning goal as Chelsea beat Manchester City in the Champions League final in 2021 - but Werner has already returned to Leipzig...

The objective of the next Chelsea boss, most likely to be Thomas Tuchel, will be to get the best out of the summer recruits and show greater responsibility in future spending as Chelsea chase a return to the summit of the Premier League.