Chelsea interim boss Frank Lampard says he “won’t let anyone off the hook” after Real Madrid knocked them out of the Champions League to inflict another big blow in their flagging season.
Two Rodrygo goals at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday sealed a 4-0 aggregate win for Real in the quarter-final tie.
It meant the Blues have now lost all four games under Lampard since he was appointed as interim boss this month.
“Every game you play you have to give everything,” he told BT Sport.
The 44-year-old Lampard, Chelsea’s all-time leading goalscorer and former manager, added: “I’ve been here now for only two weeks so I’m hungry.
“I won’t let anyone off the hook in terms of seeing this season out. It has to be the opposite.”
With Chelsea 11th in the Premier League and 10 points behind seventh-placed Brighton, winning the Champions league was their best chance of qualifying for Europe next season.
But now they must face up to a trophyless campaign in which they will have nothing to show for a record outlay on players in the last two transfer windows of about £600m.
Tuesday’s performance represented the best of Lampard’s brief second tenure as Blues boss, but once again they were unable to take the chances that came their way.
They have scored just once in the four losses under Lampard.
“It’s not for the want of trying,” added the former Blues midfielder, who scored 211 goals in his 13 years as a player.
“We had lots of crosses and lots of players in good positions so I will never criticise the lads for that – it’s just the fact that if they took any of those chances. If the tie went to 2-1 at any point, you really would have felt the crowd turn.
“We were playing world-class opposition there and we were, for me, the better team and had chances.
“It’s the first game since I’ve been back that I’ve seen the things and we’ve really been implementing them – and that’s something that we want to continue for the rest of the season.
“Now that standard cannot drop. That’s the one message, once the dust settles on this, in-house.”
Chelsea have seven league games remaining, the first of which is at home against Brentford on Wednesday, 26 April.
Source: BBC