And I believe him!
It’s wide knowledge that Chelsea were and are still banned from signing players after a FIFA imposed transfer ban.
As a result, a lot of pundits and former players have claimed that this is the reason as to why Frank Lampard has promoted a number of youth players and returning loanees into the first team.
I don’t think that anyone can doubt that it has probably made a difference to some youth players and the amount of game time they are seeing so far this season.
However, I also have no doubts at all that if Lampard saw hard work and enough potential, he would have given certain youth players plenty of regular game time in the first team squad regardless if they signed other players as well.
If anything, it would be senior players and under performers such as Olivier Giroud, Pedro and Ross Barkley who would have suffered even more, and would probably have been shipped out in the summer.
As reported by Four Four Two, Lampard has addressed this talk.
He said:
“I set out this season to see what these young boys could do.
“If I didn’t have a transfer ban and came to this club and had opportunities to bring players in during the summer, I still would have trusted the young boys and would have made decisions around that.
“There is a lot of noise, win, lose or draw; selection, whatever 11 I pick,” said Lampard, who has been unable to sign new players because of a club transfer embargo.
“With this big wide world of social media we have now it will be dissected and people will have different opinions and some people who are ex players or ex managers will have different opinions.
“For me to have thrown that away after one game at Manchester United and a few opinions, that would have made me a bit of a flip-flopper.
“The minute you don’t get a result, it will be, ‘you only got the job because you played for them’ or something like that. There are flip sides to that.
“My job is not to even have my head turned by any of those comments either way and to focus on what’s in hand.”
