The Chelsea chief executive Peter Kenyon expects Frank Lampard to honour the remainder of his contract if they cannot persuade him to sign a new deal. Kenyon also confirmed that Internazionale's only bid so far, of £7.95m, will be rejected by the club.
Lampard is reported to be unhappy with the uncertainty around his future but Kenyon is adamant that their contract offer remains on the table. "The situation is ongoing," said Kenyon. "We have always maintained that we want Frank to stay and an offer was made to that effect. That offer is still on the table. Frank is under contract and he still has one year to run on that.
"We'd like to hope we can reach an agreement but if we can't we have always worked on the basis that Frank sees out the terms of his contract. Chelsea has made its position very clear to Internazionale and they have come back now with a financial offer. That will be rejected.
"Contrary to what you may have read it is totally untrue that [manager Luiz] Felipe [Scolari] was pushing the club or putting pressure on us to change the offer to Frank. At no stage was he ever in conflict with the club's position or asked the board or the owner to change the offer."
But Jose Mourinho's No2 at the San Siro, Beppe Baresi, insists Inter have not given up in their bid for the midfielder. "In all honesty I don't follow transfer rumours closely," he told Radio Kiss Kiss. "But I know that the possibility is still open."
Kenyon said that Chelsea were looking to strengthen their squad still further following the arrivals of Portugal internationals Deco and Jose Bosingwa. Chelsea have been linked with a number of players, including Milan's Brazilian star Kaka, and Kenyon stressed they are chasing a number of others.
"We have been linked with all sorts of names, that's inevitable during the transfer window and most of them you can dismiss as speculation," Kenyon said. "But clearly we have one or two targets and we want to support the manager with the players he wants. Everybody thinks players like Kaka and Ronaldinho for example are fantastic players but Felipe made it clear that players like that being linked with us is just speculation."
Kenyon said Chelsea wanted to retain an English core in their side, particularly in the light of Uefa's demands for Champions League participants to include eight home-grown players in their competition squads. "Chelsea is still committed to having an English/home-grown core to our team supplemented by the best global talent," said Kenyon.
"With the Uefa four and four rule, every club in European competition will have to do this and we don't have too many concerns on that front at Chelsea. Our first preference obviously is that our academy players are English, if not then they are still 'our' home-grown players."
