PBP: Christian Pulisic (starts): Atalanta vs Borussia Dortmund Feb 22, 2018

Schurrle stopped from scoring by a well-timed slide tackle. Ball deflected over.

 

What is Schurrle pissed about. He was getting held back by Gotze

 

And Arsenal is holding onto a 2-1 loss to advance. They may be advancing, but compared to where they want to be? Doing poorly.

 

Well no one said where clubs "want" to be is logical.

I don't much care where Arsenal "want" to be... they are at best 6th best in the premier league right now. Maybe they'll improve on that, maybe they won't. BVB could "want" to be BL champs again. Liverpool I'm sure "want" to be premier league champions. No amount of wanting will change the fact that between where they are now and where they want to be is a significantly long and difficult journey.

 

Jump for joy about scraping by Atalanta in the Europa League all you want. Nobody here's going to stop you. No US fan is going to shed a tear when Pulisic leaves this Dortmund team either. Maybe this time BVB will spend the money well.

 

I'm not a BVB fan, I'm just saying.

And no one is paying what BVB value Pulisic at, either. So unless you have some inside info about him being willing to wind down his contract and being sold in January 2020 or leaving on a free in July 2020, I don't think you should get too excited about him swapping jerseys anytime soon.

 

MF Christian Pulisic, 3 -- The slump of the 19-year-old continues. Atalanta created most of their attacks in the first half by waiting for Pulisic to run head first into a wall and lose the ball.

 

I think you overstate how poor BVB are and how far the journey is to compete for titles. Sahin has no legs, and Dahoud has been a disappointment and needs to play spot minutes until he gets himself together. Weigl, Phillip, Guerreiro healthy, add Tah, and things come good pretty fast.

I am making an assumption they hire the right coach and manage CL this year. (It is worth noting the run in is harder than it has been thus far in the second half.)

They need two midfielders, a decent fullback, a very good keeper, and a striker if Bats leaves.

 

It's much less about how poor BVB are -- even though they aren't that good and are lucky they are in a league with less truly top competition as opposed to the prem or Spain -- and much more about how much better Bayern are. And I said the same thing about Liverpool in their league, and that's from a Liverpool supporter; LFC are a solid side, but City are just that much better. You'd have to assume everything at LFC goes right and lots goes wrong for City to really think LFC are "close" to a prem title. BVB are in a very similar situation...

Yeah... that's half the starting 11 (they also have to replace Reus sooner or later). And you're assuming they can get their targets and that all their targets work out ideally. Even then, you have to assume Bayern, which is better in every single position, doesn't get better and fails to replace Robbery sufficiently.

The reality is that it's easier for Bayern to get better than for BVB to close the gap... there's a reason that this will be the 14th Bayern BL title in the last 20 seasons.

 

You are assuming much more than that.

 

did you make a wrong turn to land here ? the mehiko boards are there .