League leaders Liverpool travel to Stamford Bridge on Sunday to trade tackles with Chelsea with Frank Lampard fully aware of the dangers posed by the Reds danger pair who were involved in a spat recently.
Liverpool's star forwards Mo Salah and Sadio Mane confronted each other in Liverpool's recent victory at Burnley as the Senegal star was incensed by Salah’s refusal to pass the ball to him moments earlier, with the Egyptian instead looking to get on the scoresheet himself.
Blues boss has finally given his take on Salah and Mane altercation, with Lampard even recalling an incident during his Chelsea days when he had a disagreement with a teammate, reports Soccernet.ng
‘They are both in the right,’ Lampard told Chelsea's official website of who behaved correctly among the Liverpool pair.
‘They are competitive lads. I played with players who demanded the ball to their feet when I shot and vice versa, I demanded they passed to me when they shot. That edginess about football, that professional competition amongst the group is good as long as it does not overstep the mark, and that is probably the job of the manager.
‘They both want to score goals, they are hungry, they are competitive, they want to be winners and when they play like they do, that is the answer. If they are not playing well enough and not performing, and you see that kind of thing going on then the manager would maybe ask many more questions, but these boys are really driven and I like it.’
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is the player with whom Lampard remembers his argument in 2002 near the start of his Chelsea career.
‘I remember being in the dressing room with him after I scored at Southampton and he complained that I had not passed to him in the game and I should have passed to him at a different moment from when I scored my goal. He was saying you scored one, you are just trying to score another one and not pass to me – and this from the man who shot 20 times a game!
‘But that was Jimmy and it is what football is about. It is different personalities, and strikers have to have an element of selfishness about them. I had it as a midfield player, I wanted to be good individually and I wanted to be part of a winning team, and you can’t have a perfect ambience around a team all the time. It is good for players to test each other.
‘Jimmy probably ignored me for a couple of days and we probably spoke again after that,’ our manager tries to recall. ‘There was no big issue but I remember it and as you get older you respect him for it, and that made Jimmy the force he was at the time too.’
