LONDON - Chelsea gave themselves a mountain to climb after a series of sloppy defensive errors at West Bromwich Albion and although they bounced back to grab a 3-3 draw their frustrated manager Frank Lampard said they have a lot of work to do.
Despite concentrating on tightening up the defence in recent weeks, defender Marcos Alonso made two mistakes that led to goals, while Thiago Silva marked his Premier League debut with an embarrassing error that led to West Brom's second goal.
"You can do as many meetings as you want -- if you're going to make those mistakes, you're going to give yourself a mountain to climb," said Lampard, unable to hide his disappointment at two points dropped to their newly-promoted opponents.
"We created two or three great chances in the first half, I felt we would create more, the only other problem at 3-0 was West Brom were going to protect their lead more," he added.
"It is a big lesson for us. We will get a lot better. We're still finding our way with new players and a lack of pre-season. Today is part of the process of getting better."
The draw leaves Chelsea in sixth place on four points from three games, with three of the five teams above them having a match in hand.
"We have two big games coming up against Tottenham (in the League Cup fourth round) and Crystal Palace. I expect to see an improvement in our performances," Lampard said, before adding a note of caution about his side's conditioning.
"In terms of team fitness, it won't be until after the international break (in October) that I expect to see us up to our real level, especially in terms of on the ball, because we haven't had time to work on that yet," he added.
Reuters