Former Chelsea star Marcel Desailly has explained why Frank Lampard and his side cannot afford to miss out on the top four this season.
Pressure is mounting on Frank Lampard following a disappointing first half of the season from Chelsea, who are now eighth having played exactly half of their games following defeat to Leicester City on Tuesday night.
The Blues are now nine points off the pace of the league-leaders and potentially even more if others win their games in hand, and that's despite Roman Abramovich sanctioning more than £200million worth of deals over the summer.
Chelsea are beginning to face the very real prospect of not only missing out on a title challenge but a top-four spot.
And while there is still time for a resurgence, Abramovich will be desperate not to slide further away from the top four with former star Desailly warning of the impact the club faces if they cannot qualify for the Champions League ahead of next season.
"I went to the Chelsea training ground at Cobham one year when they didn't make it to the Champions League and I could see the effect it had on the club," the Frenchman told TalkSPORT.
"Some people will not talk about it, say it does not matter because financially, they are good, but no, when they didn't make it to the Champions League, they made adjustments.
"You don't throw money into a business when it is not developing anything, so when this happens again, it will be another question to see what changes can be made."
The World Cup winner added: "The financial support Chelsea is always bringing themselves when they get to a higher level is that they try to get more young kids into the team, and I feel like this could be a crucial thing, because if you spend more money, you expect to deliver.
"I felt like Frank did extremely well when he didn't have the money, so now that he did, the expectation level is going to be even higher because he did so well in the first season."
