FRANKLY TRANSFER FEES MEAN NOTHING

FRANK LAMPARD goes into the new Premier League campaign with a pledge to pick his Chelsea team on merit – and NOT price tags. With more than £200million spent on new faces this summer, there are concerns that the club’s crop of homegrown talent, which flourished last season, will automatically drop down the Stamford Bridge pecking order.

But Lampard (left) delivered a positive message to Mason Mount (below) and Co – and a gentle warning to big-money arrivals such as £75m Kai Havertz and

£50m Timo Werner

– by insisting huge transfer fees guarantee nothing in his camp.

Ahead of tomorrow’s opener at Brighton, he said: “There’s never a point where you are siding with players depending on how much they cost or how long they have been here.

“Those are not the rules. Nobody would expect that.

“I’m not silly – we’re bringing in players to improve and take the team to a new level so you want them playing games. Generally, the players have to feel it from me week after week that as long as they’re training right and acting right about the place they have the possibility to play.” England winger Mount, 21, is one of those deemed most under threat from the latest batch of foreign imports, especially former Bayer Leverkusen forward Havertz.

Yet so far he has responded to the competition exactly how Lampard did during 13 glory-filled years of record-breaking feats as a Chelsea player.

“I always saw it as a challenge,” added Lampard, the club’s all-time highest scorer with 211 goals.

“Players with the right mentality will up their own game.”