Frank Lampard looks ahead as Chelsea’s dismal campaign enters the final stages

Frank Lampard said Chelsea must use the final games of their season to start building for the future after defeat to Real Madrid eliminated them from the Champions League and ended their faint hopes of salvaging the campaign.

The Blues threatened for an hour to claw back the 2-0 deficit hanging over them from the first leg in the Bernabeu but were ultimately outclassed by the holders, who scored twice without reply in the second half at Stamford Bridge and further laid bare the extent of the work needed at the club.

It leaves the team with little to play for in their last seven Premier League games having long since dropped out of the race for the top four and with qualification for the Europa League or Europa Conference League unlikely.

Lampard – appointed on an interim basis in place of Graham Potter at the start of April – is contracted until the end of the season, by which point Chelsea hope to have completed their lengthy search for Potter’s permanent replacement.

Until then, the club have little to fight for in the league besides avoiding the ignominy of a first bottom-half finish since 1996.

The team have lost all four matches since Lampard took charge and are on a run of just four league wins in six months, as questions have intensified about the club’s direction following Todd Boehly’s transfer outlay of more than £500million.

Afterwards, club legend Didier Drogba speaking on French TV criticised the way the club is being run under Boehly, accusing the owner of “lacking class” and saying he no longer recognises the club with whom he won the Champions League in 2012.

Lampard refused to comment on his former team-mate’s comments, instead calling on his players to start thinking about next season now.

“The landscape of the Premier League moves so fast, it changes,” said Lampard. “To say any team has a divine right to be in the Champions League is tough. Man United have spent time out of the Champions League, Arsenal have spent time out. Lots of big clubs have.

“I do think we can set the building blocks now of where we want to get to.

“I’m here for a reason obviously. Because the season has been what it is. Can I affect it in that period? Hopefully yeah. But the bigger thing for the club will be, we want to get back to where we were but the challenges are big.

“Everyone’s doing the same. Everyone’s investing, everyone’s getting better. Maybe some clubs are more stable than we are at the minute in terms of the squad.

“I don’t think we can get ahead of ourselves other than having little tasters like tonight where there’s disappointment, and understand what it takes to get back.”

Chelsea’s performance was much improved from the 2-1 home defeat against Brighton on Saturday, with significant chances for Marc Cucurella and N’Golo Kante when the score was 0-0 that could have turned the tie.

Lampard opted for a surprise number 10 pairing of Kante alongside Conor Gallagher, whilst opting to leave more recognised attackers Raheem Sterling and Joao Felix on the bench.

“I picked a team that I felt was the most in-form team individually, the fittest team in terms of what this game was going to ask of us,” he said.

“They showed that they can compete with Real Madrid for sure, other than in the final-third stuff. I think it’s important to take each step, but each step for the players and for me now is back to work Thursday and get working towards Brentford.

“We have to get results until the end of the season, give performances until the end of the season. Then go again next year.

“I saw things that I liked. There’s no doubt in that first 60 minutes if you’d asked Carlo (Ancelotti) how he felt, in the first half we gave them a lot of problems. Individuals were performing at the level we want, the team was at the level we want.

“We can’t come away from that. Brighton wasn’t that level, we said that after the game. We can’t be a team that turns up here and doesn’t turn up there. Now, it’s competitive all the way through.”