Chelsea: Lampard discusses race for third after win over Norwich
Chelsea may be able to strike a deal for Ben Chilwell as Sevilla are interested in taking Marcos Alonso off their hands. Frank Lampard knows he has to offload some of his defenders before he can bring in new faces.
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Lampard has had to defend Alonso from stinging criticism in recent weeks.
Gary Neville slammed the Spaniard for not tracking back in the dying minutes of the defeat to West Ham which led to them conceding a goal.
"They [full-backs] have a responsibility to do both [attack and defend] and that's important," Lampard said. "It's not easy with isolated 'slatings' – it's much easier to comment from afar.
"We do try and play football. We do try and be progressive but we don't do that at the idea of wanting to concede goals. And recovery runs are a huge part of football and the players must do them whether they are the first minutes or the 90th minute.
Marcos Alonso could lose his place in the Chelsea team (Image: GETTY)
"So I don't think it's quite fair to look at Marcos in that isolated incident. Yes, he can recover, we can recover better as a team but that has to be something fundamental to the team. The players have to have the desire to run backwards as much as they run fast forwards.
"And sometimes you have to have the desire to make the difficult runs, whatever they may be to help the team. I can't complain about that with the team this year but if you isolate one goal that is so crucial because it wins the points, fair enough. But I know with my players that generally we have a desire to press very well off the ball and when goes beyond us we will recover and get there.
"It's a game where we slipped up, not just that mistake but other mistakes and lost the game for it."