Lampard rubbishes Blues title hopes

Liverpool – Frank Lampard (right) rubbished his side’s chances of winning the Premier League this season after missing out on the chance to move back top of the table with a 1- 0 defeat at Everton in front of 2 000 fans at Goodison Park on Saturday.

A run of 17 games without defeat after splashing £220 million in the transfer market had seen Chelsea talked up as serious title contenders to the likes of Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester City.

However, Lampard claimed his side have to still be considered young pretenders after they failed to muster a response to Gylfi Sigurdsson’s 22nd minute penalty.

“Some people who are saying ‘we’re going to win the league, we’ve got the best squad in the league’, it’s ridiculous stuff,” said Lampard.

“When you talk about the best squads, you have to look at the teams that have won it in the last two, three or four years. Their squads are full of strikers and wingers that score 30 or 40 goals a season, midfield players that have won multiple league titles all over the place.

“We have some but we have young players and as a squad we’re not there. It’s very quickly gone from we were nowhere near good enough after the games against West Brom and Southampton, to we’re title favourites.

“We’ll have to work through nights like tonight. It was a big test for us, we didn’t pass that test but we will in the future.”

Everton fed off the atmosphere created by supporters inside Goodison for the first time since March to arrest a slide of just one win in their previous seven games.

“There were only 2 000, but we are really happy for them. They have seen a good match from Everton, we played well with a fantastic spirit,” said Everton boss Carlo Ancelotti.

“The impact was really strong. It is really important to have the suppporters, it is a totally different environment here completely.”

Victory lifted Everton up to seventh place on the log and within just a single point of the top four places. –