Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has explained that his team were fully aware of the counter-attacking threat Wolverhampton Wanderers possessed ahead of Tuesday night’s game, but feels they played right into the hands of their opponents.
The Blues suffered a 2-1 away defeat at Molineux against Wolves, which makes it back-to-back losses after the previous result on the weekend against Everton.
Olivier Giroud continued his excellent individual season with the opener, but Wolves responded with strikes from Daniel Podence and Pedro Neto in the Premier League meeting.
Despite being on top for the opening hour of the match, Chelsea were unable to really create a handful of clear cut chances and ultimately were made to pay by a much more clinical side that were a threat going forward.
Neto’s 95th minute goal was a counter-attacking one as Chelsea pressed for a winner and some feel Kurt Zouma should have committed a tactical foul on the Wolves attacker.
Lampard spoke in his post-match press conference about Chelsea being caught out by Wolves on the counter-attack and stressed it was something his team had worked on in the build-up.
“We didn’t play well enough. It is pretty simple. The threat from Wolves is clearly the counter-attack and it is a major threat from what they have got. It is the main one because they have speed and quality in forward areas,” Lampard said, as quoted by Football.London.
“The players knew it before the game, the players knew it in game but we allowed some counter-attacks. If you are going to allow a team to play to their strengths then you may lose that game.”
Wolves, in particular Neto, proved a real danger to the Chelsea backline when flying forward in possession and it’s how they were eventually caught out for the late winner.
Perhaps some better game management in stoppage time could have helped, but overall the Blues can’t be too disgruntled on losing again after the level of the performance.
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