Frank Lampard warned Chelsea signings must perform IMMEDIATELY like at Liverpool and Man City – ‘They won’t give you another £200m’
Frank Lampard has been warned his position at Chelsea will come under increased scrutiny unless he gets his side challenging for major honours following a £250m summer spending spree.
That's the view of former Blues striker Tony Cascarino, who has been critical of Lampard's management for some time - already tipping the former England midfielder to be the first Premier League boss to be sacked this season.
The Blues landed Edouard Mendy at the end of last month to become their seventh new addition of the summer.
The goalkeeper joined Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner, Ben Chilwell, Malang Sarr, Thiago Silva and Kai Havertz in arriving at Stamford Bridge.
And after such investment, Cascarino believes Lampard needs to produce results, and quickly, making reference to how Liverpool and Manchester City's previous respective big-spending windows resulted in at least some success.
He told Weekend Sports Breakfast: "If it doesn't work out and you don't get players to deliver straight away [your position is in jeopardy].
"Man City have had it, they've had players come in straight away and deliver, Liverpool have done it too.
"If you're telling the owners what you need, what will make them a better team and how you can challenge then you have to justify that. You have to be vindicated pretty quickly.
"They're not going to wait and go that didn't work I'll give you another £200m!"
And Lampard's failure to work out his best defensive partnership is at the root of his problems, according to Cascarino.
He explained: "The heart of the defence is his problem. Since last summer Chelsea have used 20 different combination of centre-half pairings of two's or three's - that's way too many.
"He's got to decide what his best pairing is. We probably know Thiago Silva is going to play, but who is going to be alongside him?
"Is he going to go with a three? Is it going to be [Kurt] Zouma, is it going to be [Andreas] Christiansen, [Antonio] Rudiger has been pushed out to the dark, [Fikayo] Tomori has been in and out.
"He's had a number of combinations at the heart of his defence and he cannot continue with that."