A 'harsh lesson' for Blues
Lampard urges team to reach Champions League level after Bayern reality check
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Bayern Munich's Serge Gnabry (far right) scoring the first of his two goals in the 3-0 win over Chelsea on Tuesday. The German winger is the first player in Champions League history to score his first six goals against sides from the same nation. He scored four against Tottenham in October.
PHOTO: REUTERS
LONDON • Frank Lampard has admitted that Chelsea are a long way from challenging the elite after Bayern Munich all but secured their place in the final eight of the Champions League with a brutal 3-0 victory at Stamford Bridge.
The Bundesliga champions destroyed the Blues in the first leg of their last-16 tie, with a brace from Serge Gnabry and Robert Lewandowski's strike sealing the statement win on Tuesday night.
To add insult to injury, Marcos Alonso received a late red card after the VAR (video assistant referee) flagged him for elbowing Lewandowski, while Jorginho will also be suspended for the second leg after picking up a booking for dissent.
Substitute Tammy Abraham, Chelsea's top scorer this season with 15 goals in all competitions, was also seen clutching his hamstring after the final whistle.
It has left Lampard conceding his side are unlikely to be playing for anything but pride when they travel to the Allianz Arena for the second leg on March 18.
"It was a harsh lesson, a reality for the players of the levels we want to get to," the Chelsea manager said. "This is Champions League football and we haven't been fighting in the knockout stages, getting through to the back end of it for some years.
"This is the reality of what it takes. They (the players) need to use this as a positive effect and it might not feel like that this evening, but what they need to do is understand the levels of the Champions League at this stage.
"A lot of the players there today either haven't played it - maybe only in the Europa League which is a big difference - or played in it a few years ago, and certainly not at Chelsea where we got to the point of the semi-finals, the final and winning it (in 2012)."
However, he refused to blame the humiliation on their failure to sign players last month.
"There's no point in looking back on anything other than the fact of being real about where we are," he said. "We're now fighting to come in the top four this year because we want to improve in the summer.
"Today was just a clear show that there's a lot of work to be done and I felt that when I took the job."
While the home defeat will give Lampard much to ponder, Bayern and their fans will head back to Munich feeling giddy after handing out another thrashing in London.
Last October's 7-2 hammering of Tottenham did not precipitate a consistent run of results, leading to then coach Niko Kovac's sacking, but his successor, Hansi Flick, has since restored their dominance.
They finished top of Group B, are leading the German league table by a point and now have one foot in the quarter-finals.
Much of that has to do with Lewandowski, who is this season's Champions League top scorer with 11 goals. But the Poland forward, who already has 39 strikes this campaign, is not just a poacher supreme - he twice supplied Gnabry in west London - leading teammate David Alaba to laud him as "world class".
"He showed today another side of himself," the Austria defender said. "He is very important to us and we are grateful to have him.
"We showed that we are back. We're very confident and this is our goal at the moment - to go from game to game and be successful."
In Naples, Antoine Griezmann cancelled out Dries Mertens' opener as Napoli and Barcelona drew 1-1.
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Goals by Serge Gnabry, the fourth straight season he has gotten into double figures since leaving Arsenal, where he had just one strike in four years, in 2016.