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Football London
Football London
Sport
Tashan Deniran-Alleyne

Chelsea news: Transfer setback, Lampard's warning, Kovacic praise and bizarre Hazard record

It's Monday! and that means it's the beginning of a fresh week.

For Chelsea and Frank Lampard it's the chance to get back on the training ground and right the wrongs from this weekend's disappointing 3-1 loss against Everton.

In terms of the Blues' league position, the defeat wasn't too costly as the remain in the final Champions League spot. Although they did fail to close the gap on Manchester City in third place.

Furthermore, their lead over fifth-placed Manchester United has been cut to five points, with London rivals Tottenham Hotspur a point and two places back.

As expected, there's been plenty of reaction to the defeat at Goodison Park and attentions have turned to tomorrow night's massive Champions League clash against Lille.

With that said, here's all the news from around Stamford Bridge over the past 24 hours.

Transfer blow

On Friday it was announced that the Blues will be able to sign players in January, having been prevented from doing so in the summer due to a transfer ban.

With that said, one player who won't be making the move to west London is right-back Youcef Atal.

This is because the defender is facing a long spell on the sidelines after going down injured in the first-half Nice's 4-1 win over Metz on Saturday.

Youcef Atal in action for Algeria (Photo by Erwin Spek/Soccrates/Getty Images)

In a statement on the club's official website, Nice said: "Bad news for Youcef Atal and the Eagles. Forced to give way half an hour into the game against Metz this Saturday (4-1), the Algerian international has passed additional exams.

"The diagnosis revealed a meniscal lesion in the right knee. The 23-year-old, who will be operated soon, will unfortunately be out of action for a long time."

Hazard stat

Eden Hazard finally got his move to Real Madrid in the summer transfer window.

But there's one thing the brilliant Belgian is yet to do for his new club - and that's stamp his authority at the top of the assists charts in La Liga.

For Chelsea, Hazard weighed in with 54 Premier League assists, which amounted to an assist every 4.5 games.

But for Madrid so far this season he has just one assist to his name and that's fewer than Barcelona goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen.

Lampard warning

The Blues head coach is promising the hard truth when analysing the Everton loss.

Chelsea were well below their best on Merseyside and defensive mistakes contributed to goals for Richarlison and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

And Lampard has urged his side to bounce back as soon as possible.

"There are home truths all the time, whatever game you play. The players need to consistently hear that," he said.

"We have got a good bunch and good group in there. In the Premier League, the competitive nature of it there are going to be times where you have difficult patches or you lose games."

Full story.

Kovacic praise

One player who could escape Lampard's wrath is Mateo Kovacic.

The Croatia midfielder scored the Blues' only goal against Everton and his performance certainly impressed a number of supporters.

A 35-second video clip of Kovacic's best moments at Goodison Park was uploaded to Reddit and prompted a lot of responses,

One of which states: "From the title I knew exactly which clip was going to be. Stellar performance!" While another thinks there's no question that Kovacic is currently the best midfielder in the Premier League.

Meanwhile, the clip of Kovacic retaining possession under immense pressure from Gylfi Sigurdsson prompted another fan on Twitter to label the midfielder as "unreal".

Full story.

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