Frank Lampard hopes Michy Batshuayi will fill the injured Tammy Abraham’s boots after the striker put Chelsea on course for victory at Hull in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
The Belgium international fired a shot that deflected past Hull keeper George Long as the home fans’ hopes of an FA Cup shock took a sixth-minute knock.
Blues boss Lampard said Batshuayi’s goal underlined the dangers of an overreliance on Abraham and spoke of his desire to see the 26-year-old thrive in his absence.
“He got his goal so I’m pleased as it’ll help his confidence,” Lampard said.
“I’ve said it all season, we can’t just rely on Tammy. I want him firing, I’ve said all season that he can do this, so I just want to see him putting home goals.
“I want to see to him performing, at this level you’re judged on scoring goals and I know he can do that so it’s good to see it. He’s an out and out striker, an international striker.”
Despite a comfortable victory, with Fikayo Tomori converting a 64th-minute free-kick into a headed second goal, Lampard felt his squad did not fully capitalise on their opportunities.
“You don’t expect it to be easy when you come here,” he said.
“Hull probably weren’t at it in the first half and we had chances to score that we didn’t take, but Hull then came back in the second half and made it very hard for us.
“I don’t know how many shots we had but we had good chances and we weren’t taking them and that’s frustrating.
“We gave them opportunities in those moments, it’s part of the process I suppose, we didn’t lose today and we’re through so its par for the course.
“I don’t want to jump forward further than this round as we don’t know even know who we’re playing next. All respect for what Hull did against us today but I’m not delighted with how we played.
“But these games are hard, sometimes you scrape through, sometimes you don’t go through when you deserve to.”
Hull manager Grant McCann was troubled by the way his squad lapsed after starting both halves of the game well.
“I’m disappointed to concede so early,” he said.
“That goal we conceded, we just switched off, so it was frustrating. I thought we started well but we settled down and Chelsea took over.
“We tried the stay on the front foot but we’re up against a top-four team, it’s easy to say we should have pressed and pushed them.
“On another day we could have put away one of those chances and maybe it would have been different.”
McCann took heart from the way the team battled back to produce a goal when trailing, with Kamil Grosicki netting in the 78th minute.
“I was pleased with the response they produced and I was pleased with some individual performances,” he said.
“Take Robbie McKenzie, one week on the bench and the next week on the team against Chelsea.
“It was a big game today, but we’re back to league games and that’s more important. It was nice to see the stadium full, when we got back to 2-1 I could feel the roar coming, we really felt the support.”
