Lampard highlights Boehly’s wasted €300m as Chelsea extend losing streak

Robin Bairner

• Updated: 27 Apr 2023 07:55 BST
• 3 min read

Chelsea’s 2-0 Premier League loss to Brighton on Wednesday only served to highlight the crisis the club is in, from the disappointing result to Frank Lampard’s bizarre team selection, which earned him criticism from the Blues support.

If the decision to sack Graham Potter was one that was coolly welcomed by Chelsea fans, under Lampard they have – somehow – only taken strides backwards, with five defeats in five games and only a single goal scored.

Lampard has not proven the PR win that owner Todd Boehly might have hoped, and he has only highlighted the woeful nature of Chelsea’s transfer business over the course of the last year, doing so most pertinently in the clash against the Bees.

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His starting XI contained only three of the 14 players that Chelsea have signed this season and who remain at the club: Raheem Sterling, Enzo Fernandez and Wesley Fofana.

Of the remaining 11, only Kalidou Koulibaly was missing because of injury. The rest were simply not in the team because Lampard did not deem them good enough.

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Chelsea's €300m of forgotten talent

While the judgement of the former Stamford Bridge icon is legitimately questionable – his record since returning to the club is proof alone of that – it is telling that none of Chelsea’s other recruits have managed to make themselves indispensable.

These are not players, after all, who have been picked up for pennies. Mykhailo Mudryk and Marc Cucurella were signed for upfront fees of €70m and €65m from Shakhtar Donetsk and Brighton respectively, while another five players arrived for fees of €12m or more.

By the time the loan fee of around €10m for Joao Felix to Atletico Madrid is thrown in, Lampard simply ignored close to €300m worth of talent that Chelsea added to their ranks over the course of the last two transfer windows.