Christian Pulisic missed the first five games of the season, played the next five (three starts), then missed the next five, then played the next three (one start), and now he has missed two in a row. Like last season, he is well on his way to playing about half of our games, which is a shame for both the club and the player. When he’s in shape, he’s one of our best players, and he was the top-rated player last season for this community, but his penchant for injury is really becoming a concern.
The 22-year-old’s absence yesterday was still a surprise, especially after head coach Frank Lampard delivered a rather optimistic update on the injury on Thursday, saying that Pulisic had trained “normally” after feeling “a little bit” of discomfort – “conscience” was the even sweeter word that was actually used.
After yesterday’s game, Lampard changed his story, claiming that Pulisic had been feeling “uncomfortable” all week and that there was no way he could have started or even played! That’s a big change in narrative, Frank!
“It was not difficult [decision to leave him out]. It was just a fact. He had to stay out. He felt uncomfortable training this week and yesterday; cannot play 90 minutes or start a Premier League match “
With Pulisic joining Callum Hudson-Odoi and Hakim Ziyech on the bench, Chelsea are left without any real wingers. Timo Werner is a striker who can pose as a winger due to his speed, while Kai Havertz and Mason Mount (and Tino Anjorin) are versatile enough to do a decent job, but neither of those players is really an ideal solution. and against Everton, he was bad.
But Lampard was not interested in looking at the situation from that perspective. He chose to use Pulisic’s injury as an opportunity to complain once again about the number of substitutions available, and the Premier League flatly refused to switch from 3 to 5, as during Project Restart and as the rest of Europe has done.
“Go back to the same story. There are muscle injuries throughout the Premier League. Go back to [the] five subs … “
“In terms of player welfare, if we ask players to travel around the world to their country and play three games in 10 days and come back and play early on a Saturday morning and then go again on Tuesday and come back to play On Saturday, the players at the highest end of the field, who are explosive, are having problems throughout the Premier League. That’s the big picture and it’s frustrating for everyone.
“Every team has great squads so everyone can pack their seats and everyone can use their squads to get through these unprecedented match-list times. Did we miss the open players today? Yes, we did it because they are great players for us ”.
-Frank Lampard; source: Football.London
While allowing more substitutes would be a good thing, we’ve said it all the time, I’m not sure how much of a difference that would have made in Pulisic’s case.
Oh, and Lampard only used two of his three available yesterday anyway, so what are we complaining about again?
PS: Get well soon CP10!