Premier League: Lampard's Chelsea gets wake up call against Liverpool

Despite the big summer spendings, Frank Lampard's Chelsea wasn't good enough against Liverpool on Sunday at Stamford Bridge. The defending champions dominated throughout the Premier League game to win 2-0 against the Blues at their den.

Sadio Mane scored both goals for Liverpool in the 50th and 54th minutes, respectively. Following an impressive campaign in 2019-20, Lampard spent £200 million to sign players to help his side move closer to the Premier League title. But the Reds, who recently lifted their first Premier League title in 30 years, played like true champions.

It is obvious that one of Lampard's immediate concerns would be to replace Chelsea's calamitous goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga. The Blues had acquired him in 2018 for £71 million, but his presence on the field on Sunday didn't justify the price tag.

According to BBC, Chelsea is now close to completing their £20 million purchase of Rennes goalkeeper Eduoard Mendy. Now that Kepa gifted Mane his second goal thanks to his awful clearance, the Blues would be eager to quickly complete the formalities involving Mendy's signing.

Even before the first goal was scored, Chelsea was already down to 10 men. Defender Andreas Christensen was shown a red card on the stroke of half-time. Referee Paul Tierney had initially opted for a yellow card. However, following the review of Christensen's desperate challenge on Mane, he was sent off.

Chelsea's miseries weren't over yet, as Jorginho's penalty was saved by Alisson, causing more pain to Lampard's boys.

After the match, Jurgen Klopp said, "It's always a tough game here. I liked the first half. It was two teams that wanted to play, create, defend, and make things happen. They were the dominant side without goals but then a massive game-changer in the last seconds which was good for us. We had to adapt to that and we did. We decided to bring Thiago on early because it was 11 v 10 and a player like him can command the rhythm. It was the perfect start for him and the boys helped him massively."

Sunday's match witnessed quite a few benchmarks. Liverpool became the first defending champions to win against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the Premier League since April 2012. Back then, Manchester United had defeated the Blues.

This also happened to be only the third time that Chelsea lost their first home game of a Premier League season. The last instances when they lost were in 1993-94 against Blackburn and 2017-18 against Burnley.