Lampard vows Chelsea 'will be back' after Champions League elimination to Real Madrid

Frank Lampard vowed Chelsea "will be back" after a dismal season was effectively ended by Real Madrid's 2-0 Champions League win on Tuesday.

A Rodrygo brace sealed a 4-0 aggregate win to book a place in the semi-finals for title-holders Real Madrid – and eliminated any hopes of Chelsea re-appearing in next season's Champions League.

In fact Chelsea face the bleak prospect of no European football at all; the Blues sit 11th in the Premier League table and are out of the FA Cup. The last time Chelsea failed to qualify for a European club tournament was 2016/17.

The West Londoners have been left counting the cost of an outlay in excess of €600 million on players under new owners and will now have a huge task to balance their books without European football to help boost club coffers.

Chelsea threatened either side of half-time with glorious chances for Marc Cucurella, who saw his close-range effort from Reece James’ cross beaten away by Thibaut Courtois, and N’Golo Kante whose shot was blocked by Eder Militao.

Profligacy has been Chelsea's undoing in a miserable 2022/23 campaign and they were punished again by two simple second-half Rodrygo finishes.

“For 60 minutes of the game, I think you probably saw why I picked the line-up,” said Lampard. “We had big energy, big organisation. We caused Real Madrid a lot of problems.

“The only thing missing from our game was a goal. We had really good chances to do that. But at this level, when you’re in a strong moment, the first half was a strong moment for us.

“Our game was exactly how I wanted it. One or two goals in those 60 minutes changes the face of it. We didn’t do that. At this level, [Real] are so clinical. You saw the result.

“The reality is we’ve been fortunate to have huge