Chelsea were urged by Frank Lampard to make Declan Rice their priority signing when he was manager, with the 45-year-old suggesting he would have become the captain "for the next 10 years".
Declan Rice is set to sign for Arsenal for £105m this window, with Mikel Arteta pulling out all the stops to land the West Ham United midfielder. Things could have turned out differently, though, if Chelsea had heeded Lampard's advice.
Speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast, Lampard made clear the club should have prioritised bringing Rice to Stamford Bridge.
“I wanted to bring in Declan Rice," Lampard said. "I was like ‘this kid is going to be the captain of Chelsea for the next 10 years’. It didn't happen, anyway, it is hard to dissect people's work.”
Rice played for Chelsea's academy as a youngster before being released at 14, but the Blues were consistently linked to him once he had broken into the West Ham first team. Alas, it wasn't to be, with the 24-year-old likely to be opting for the Emirates Stadium and the project currently being headed up by Arteta.
In his interview Lampard highlighted the issues surrounding the club he managed on an interim basis last season.
For him, there were too many players to deal with, with too few of the squad showing the required motivation to succeed as they struggled in the Premier League and had little progress in domestic cups or the Champions League.
"I could see in training the the level wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to get a result at Brentford at home or whatever, let alone Real Madrid," he said. "When I got there I could see the team spirit and the togetherness was not there. It was nothing bad, but you have to train elite to be elite.
"The minute we didn't get through against Real, you're in to that end of season zone and what are you playing for and that is not the norm at Chelsea. At Chelsea, we should be playing for something. We played for not so much, another reason why motivation came down."
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The Blues have been linked with Sadio Mane, along with Paris Saint-Germain star Neymar, in a bid to improve their squad, while Manuel Ugarte is PSG-bound. Kylian Mbappe could be on the cards, too.
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