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Havertz ‘frustrated’ by Chelsea’s ‘mistakes’ as defensive frailties continue

Chelsea midfielder Kai Havertz has spoken of Chelsea’s frustration as their defensive frailties once again reared its head in the 3-3 draw with Southampton.

The Blues looked on course to taking all three points as summer signing Timo Werner finally opened his Premier League goalscoring account, the German netting a first-half brace at Stamford Bridge.

However, Southampton would pull one back just before the break after Havertz was caught on the ball in midfield by Che Adams, who slipped it through the Chelsea defence into the in-form Danny Ings who duly halved the deficit.

The Saints would pull level 12 minutes into the second-half following a catalogue of errors at the back, including yet another howler from Kepa Arrizabalaga, allowing Adams to equalise from close range.

Havertz would restore Chelsea’s lead two minutes later, but they were once again unable to hang on to their advantage, failing to deal with a 92nd minute free-kick to allow Jannik Vestergaard to snatch a point.

The result was Chelsea’s second 3-3 draw of the fledgeling campaign to date, with Frank Lampard having so far failed to fix his side’s long-standing frailty at the back, leaving club-record signing Havertz to air his frustrations at the side’s mistakes.

“We’re very frustrated about the result,” he told the official Chelsea website. “We had 42 good minutes in the first half but then I made a mistake and we conceded a goal, which changed the game a little bit.

“We got it to 3-2 and then we have to take the result and get the win at home but we didn’t do it. Now we have to stick together and hopefully we can do better next time.”

“We have to take responsibility for that,” he added. “We have 11 players on the pitch and everybody has to work hard so we don’t concede goals like this.

“It’s not always one person who makes the mistake so we have to look at our mistakes and try to solve the problems.

“We only have one or two days, only one training session with all the players together so of course it’s different but every team has to deal with it, not only us. We didn’t have a lot of preparation so now we have to work hard and stay together to do better next time.”

Lampard avoids laying into hapless Kepa and under-fire defence after 3-3 draw with Southampton

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