Lampard discloses substitution was on his mind before half-time

Chelsea manager Frank Lampard wasn’t happy with the team in the first half of the exciting Chelsea against Arsenal game last night.

He admitted that he wanted to make a substitution within the first 10 minutes of the game itself – but, of course, he had to wait painfully till half-time to make the switch.

“That’s not just Emerson, that’s probably any of the players to change it slightly because it’s hard to convey a message with your voice on the sidelines in this sort of atmosphere.

“Sometimes it has to be a gesture; we changed and it got better. It wasn’t so much the three [at the back] but Mikel Arteta isn’t silly, he saw us play it at Tottenham, found a way to pin our five back. They had us marking one at the back, they had numbers in midfield, they won all the second balls and that had to change.”

“I don’t think we got it wrong because when you go and play as we did at Tottenham last week, you probably would have questioned my sanity had we played four and it gone that way in the first half an hour,” he added.

“For me, the main thing in the first half an hour was not tactics, it was the spirit and the fight of the team. They were quicker, we were lethargic. They were brave, we were nervous. That was the main thing.”

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