Lampard admits Chelsea needed luck to beat Ajax but ‘deserved’ it

Nestor Watach

Chelsea manager Frank Lampard admitted that his team had some luck as they beat Ajax 1-0, but made their own luck to collect all three points.

The Chelsea boss, as usual, named a young line-up featuring academy graduates, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Tammy Abraham, and they put in a mature performance to come away with the Dutch capital with all three points.

The Eredivisie champions believed they opened the scoring midway through the first half when Quincy Promes found himself with a chance for a tap-in, taking advantage of a deflection.

But the Blues had a let-off as replays showed he was offside by the most fractional of margins, and it was subsequently chalked off by VAR.

From there, Chelsea went on to take control of the game, eventually breaking the deadlock five minutes from full-time with a strike in off the underside of the bar from substitute Michy Batshuayi.

“I’m so happy to come away with this,” said the Chelsea manager, speaking to BT Sport.

“We knew how tough this game was going to be. They are a strong side, the atmosphere was strong and then to play and beat them – and deserve to beat them – the way we did was brilliant. I was so, so proud of the performance.

“I think we deserved our luck today. I think we deserved our breaks, we haven’t had many VAR breaks this year so I suppose it might have been coming, but you create your own luck.

“But for such a creative team they are, we didn’t have Kepa doing too much.”