REACTION: ASHLEY COLE SPEAKS FRANKLY

Ashley Cole believes unshakeable self-belief possessed by Frank Lampard has helped our midfielder react to England doubters with a hot scoring run at the start of the season.

Lampard's winner against Portsmouth on Saturday was his third club goal of the season and his fourth overall including his international strike midweek against Germany.

Cole, who was also a Chelsea hero at the weekend for his late goal-line clearance, said afterwards:

'You come here and Frank is loved by the Chelsea fans and again he produced the magic that we needed.

'I think it is a disgrace personally that before the England game he got booed. A player like that needs to be shown some respect and him scoring in that game showed so much spirit and fight and belief in himself.

'For me he is one of the best midfielders around and he is also one of the most underrated players. He was brilliant every time I watched Chelsea play when I was at Arsenal with the amount of goals and assists he gets, and he popped up again with the winner this game.'

Cole sees the same mental strength throughout the Chelsea squad.

'For me, fighting spirit wins titles. We had it at Arsenal when I was there and the lads here show great fight and spirit every game and it shows when we are not playing well, we nick 1-0s and that is what we need to be champions.

'Portsmouth was a tough game, they have good players, but I don't think anyone can question the start we have had, it has been brilliant - picking up a point at Liverpool which everyone knows is a tough game - and we knew this would be a tough game also.

'We have picked up the three points so we are happy. It is going well for us.'

Goalscorer Lampard was just happy to have beaten his England colleague David James, in recent years one of Chelsea's most enduring obstacles at Stamford Bridge.

'I think he was put off by a deflection, it came off Hreidarsson's foot I think, but there was power in it.

'He might have saved it had it been clean without a deflection but he has made untold great saves against me in the past, especially here, and I am pleased to see one get past him,' Lampard said, in addition explaining that winning back the title rather than any personal goal total was his number target for the season.

'It wasn't our best performance and we have dug in for a result in the end because Portsmouth did very well. Maybe we suffered from players coming back from internationals and we didn't have the pace in our game that we should have at home - like we had against Birmingham in the first game.'