Chelsea must stick with their belief in younger players, or they’ll lose them as they’ve lost so many down the years, says manager Frank Lampard.

Under pressure to cling to fourth place in the Premier League, and with a £150million war chest at his disposal should he want to enter the transfer market this month, Lamps could resort to the methods of his predecessors and buy talent off the shelf.

But the Blues gaffer insists that he wants to stick to his policy of developing young stars of the future, and he laments the way some of the golden prospects from the past have been lost in favour of short-term buys.

Although he didn’t list them by name, he was clearly alluding to the glittering careers that the likes of Kevin de Bruyne and Mo Salah have enjoyed after slipping through Chelsea’s clutches when past managers bought superstars to pad out the first team instead of sticking with, and encouraging, younger talents.

He believes that if the football club doesn’t support its young prospects, it will harm the club in the long run.

“I asked for a reaction [from my young players] after [losing to] Bournemouth,” he explained, following the miserable recent defeat at Stamford Bridge – since eclipsed by impressive wins at Spurs and Arsenal. “I asked for a reaction and they gave it. But I believe in the players, and my young players, and I thought Mason Mount’s performance was a great example of why you want to stick with, and have patience with, these young players… and not just Mason, also Tammy and Tomori.

“Mason is a young boy, and there will be moments when a game will be difficult for him and he’ll learn and his next performance will be better… and then there’ll be games [like at Tottenham] when you see the player that he is.

“I think if we’re not patient, and if we don’t stick with the [younger] players then we might end up in a situation like we’ve had before when absolute top world-class players have been at Chelsea when they’ve been 20 or 21, and managers maybe didn’t stick with them then. I’m in a position where I’m going to stick with them.”

Chelsea face Burnley at the Bridge this weekend.