Frank Lampard was naturally delighted to mark his recall to the side with a goal on Wednesday night.
The midfielder started for the first time in three games against Valencia in our Champions League group game, and struck our goal early in the second half with a trademark finish, only for a late Roberto Soldado penalty to earn our hosts a point.
For Lampard though, his goal marked the end of a frustrating period in which his Chelsea future has been repeatedly questioned by those outside the club.
'I always want to play, that's a given. I've been like that throughout my career,' said the 33-year-old. 'I love playing for this club. I am very proud of playing here. I've had knocks before in my career [and] it makes me work harder to come back.
'I like to play games and get momentum, I don't always start the season out of the blocksand hopefully now I can get a run of games.'
Many will have expected a player who has scored in excess of 170 Chelsea goals to hit the net with the chance he was presented when Florent Malouda had squared across the area, but Lampard insisted nothing was inevitable about a goal on his return.
'Nothing is in the script, you have to work for it but I am pleased,' he admitted. 'I want to play, not just pick my money up and sit on my backside sitting on the bench, but you have to respect the manager, the team and the quality we have in the squad.
'It was a sweet moment, the season hasn't quite got going for me yet for a few reasons, so to come here in a game like this and score a goal is the start of a big season for me. I tried to keep it down and it was a nice feeling to see that one hit the net.'
The goal came in the middle of a frantic period in which either side could have scored more than once, were it not for some excellent goalkeeping. We eventually surrendered the lead inside the final 10 minutes, but Lampard felt a draw was probably a fair result on reflection.
'Qualification games in the group stage can be slightly bland at times but this was more exciting,' he said. 'You have to find a middle ground of protecting your lead and playing attractive stuff. From our point of view it was a good performance although disappointing to lose that lead.
'They're a fantastic team, we watched the video from when they played Barcelona a couple of weeks ago and we out-Barcelona'd Barcelona in a way, played great football and we were very aware of what they could do tonight. We sat back a bit after the goal, you know against a team of quality you're going to suffer at some points, and probably a draw was a fair result.
'We won our first game [against Bayer Leverkusen] which was important and now we have two back to back games against Genk and if we win them both I would have thought we put ourselves basically through, but we can't take that for granted and we have to carry on.'
No comments:
Post a Comment