Hmm... not sure I'd go that far, tbh. No, he looked out of sorts a bit but still contributed. Whether Pul would have done better I don't know. I take the point, though, that Pul has played in some big games. That's fair.
A little harsh, yes. In terms of advancing the play, he wasn’t keeping up with Willian’s ideas on several occasions and just didn’t offer the consistent threat Pul would have provided IMO. He definitely contributed and realistically, for me, should have been part of an equalizing goal that was harshly ruled out thanks to an arbitrary interpretation of how VAR works
In all honesty he looked like a player coming back from injury which kinda makes sense. Of course, on that basis, (and as you suggest), maybe Puli should have started? I suppose, on a human level, it makes sense that Frank's learned to trust what he's going to get with Mount whereas, regardless of his experience elsewhere, Puli's maybe still something of an unknown quantity? I dunno... I'd like to be a fly on the wall with this kinda thing to see what's being said and what people are doing in training.
I only saw the first half and thought we were more than a tad unlucky to be behind! With all this non-stop Pulisic talk I am beginning to realise just how 'American' this site is!! There are more than just Pulisic waiting for their chance! He WILL get his opportunity soon, I have been VERY impressed with the young guys so far this season and think it will only get better when CHO & RLC (in my opinion currently our best player) are fit again. Patience is the key for us Chelsea fans looking for results and patience is the key for the American fans amongst us as far as CP goes.
the issue is that its a really long season the team already has injury issues you don't and shouldn't push guys this early into the season. Emerson clearly wasn't ok and mount didn't look 100% either. they have two more matches this week and a champions league match that they have to win next wed. With all these matches they need to rotate guys to win the matches they need to win. Obviously the outside factor is cho/james and if cho is ready to go now he will be the starter and mount getting hurt isn't as big of a deal. But again you have a player coming off an injury...you can't just expect them to play every minute when they return right out of the gate. The same idea works with the emerson/james in the back. the other thing rotating players does it keeps player sharp in case of an injury and you don't have to worry about someone like mount coming off at half and realizing you have two options and they've been riding the bench and aren't sharp but someone has to enter the match. his ability to manager the team/roster just hasn't been great.
Are we going to look back at the 20 seconds leading up to every goal now? Is there no room for humans to make a decision now?
This Pulisic talk needs to ********ing chill too. Until we can play a match were multiple injuries don't force our hands early, this is what will happen. I'm no Willian fan, but so far he is ahead of him. You can make the case for Mount, but he's scoring. Regardless though, I want Puli to succeed, but if we think he's going to provide the scoring that Mount is, that's not his game.
Yes, the Pulisic who was arguably the best player on the pitch outside of Kante when we played Liverpool last, deserves to be talked about. Anyone inferring American bias can piss off because we aren’t talking about an unknown entity. He has featured and played damn well in the CL, he has featured regularly for a very good team. Yes, he deserves to be talked about as someone deserving time over Mount. While Mount has played very well this season, he is hardly someone I view as an undisputed starter. It’s over now and I don’t think anyone is suggesting we would have won had the lineup been slightly different. I do think he would have offered something more to this game than Mason and that is a perfectly reasonable discussion to have. Probably would have seen his introduction sooner had we not been forced into two subs. At least we didn’t see Barkley today so there’s that.
Jose loves talking, doesn't he? Mourinho on Chelsea: "When you start accepting defeats just because your team played well and just because your players gave their best, a performance for people to be proud of… I think when you get used to it, that’s when the big clubs stop being big clubs."Harsh? 😬 pic.twitter.com/yQu30uVNuW— GOAL (@goal) September 22, 2019
That's been my point for 3 consecutive matches. I'd rather see Pulisic than Willian, but right now Willian is ahead. But WTF are we supposed to do when we are forced into multiple changes a game due to injury? That's how this works. Which I'm not saying you don't agree with, just that we can't do much when we lose two defenders inside of the first 38 minutes.
Still an imbecile after driving two teams into the ground, I see. Not one for learning much is he... It’s true. I don’t mean to harp on the Pulisic point either. It’s just saying, hey, we have this kid who has been through a hell of a lot more already at his age than Mason - let’s not wade into the waters of potentially seeing this as favoritism. Christian has played against the Bayerns and Madrids of the world, let’s not forget that. Lessons are hopefully being learned as we continue to move forward. Jose can talk all the shit he wants. Mr Unlimited Resources has zero insight into what tools it is Frank is currently working with.
no ur point was that I am a troll for telling you it was going to happen and pulisic wouldn't play lol. mount played 90 and isn't fully healthy just to not play pulisic...think about that. On top of that look at lamps comment about mount who had to play because they needed to be tougher in the midfield and in the very next comment said mount plays up top where he helps the team lol. the fact he he is asked about pulisic and immediately starts talking about mount tells you what his thinking is.
You have yet to make a point except to troll. Nothing you've said comes into play when we make 2 ********ing subs due to injury each match. It's still a knee jerk reaction. Nothing today changes your so called point. You made a ridiculous point to say Pulisic needs to leave after not getting minutes against Norwich.
YBH I think that's the point people are missing and why frank's continuing to push Mount... because he scores goals. If you look at ALL the big clubs, (including us over the past few years), they have a goal threat from multiple sources, including defence and definitely from midfield. In the past, of course, we had supah himself to chip in. Now we've Kante who's trying to do that job as well apparently The point being that neither Willian nor Kovacic provide any real goal threat and with us relying on a 21 y/o kid as us our CF, that's important because if he's struggling, we are SOL Someone pointed this out on the TV the other day... that WIllian and Kovacic scored about 3-4 goals between them last season, (I forget exactly how many but it wasn't a fat lot). Of course, tbf that's largely because Kovacic has been with us for over a year and STILL hasn't scored a goal IIRC. Willian's been with us since 2013 and has scored a total of 28 goals in all competitions. The thing is, if we play a load of fellas in midfield, none of whom are going to score goals, I don't see how we're going to be competitive this year. It's just not going to happen.
Just on the point of what Jose says and how much notice people should take of it, I read something the other day that said he'd advised Frank that he didn't need any more defenders because he already had... Kurt Zouma
The “Mount scores goals argument” is silly, because against a side like Liverpool he won’t be in a position to score them and doesn't contribute enough in the other facets of his game. If we’ve built a side around Mason Mount, we’ve done a bad job. Meanwhile, the argument that “we need Mount because our striker is only 21” is equally nonsense; either our striker scores goals or he doesn’t.
Jose is past it. Obviously, the game had past him by. He's as much responsible for the mess we're in than anyone else because we have a squad of players who are all older, or inln our case in weird mix.
Ideally he can play centrally, and then the issue resolves itself. That he's favored by Lampard should be of little surprise. This weird fascination with him is just that though weird. Like he's responsible for our plight. He does score goes, which outside of today is pretty telling because a senior player score our first goal in the league. It's an even weirder obsession to say just because he scores doesn't mean he should play. Who the hell else in this squad today is scoring outside of Tammy? Our issues have more to do with our porous defense and our total lack of quality midfield play going forward and less to do with favorite Mason Mount. The fact we have to rely on him says more than anything as well.
No, the issue doesn’t resolve itself if he plays centrally, because then we have to play a double pivot. Which isn’t ideal. Mount is best as a pressing #10, but that’s a role that works against sides WE are pressing. We weren’t going to press Liverpool - we played more conservatively. In which case, what is Mount offering? He’s not very creative on the ball (again, his passing stats are not good) and he’s not very good at keeping possession against the press (TAA took the ball off him a number of times). Nor is he going to break the press by dribbling. In which case, why start him coming off an injury? Mount is best pressing, linking players and making runs into the box. You need to have possession for that or to turn teams over. It’s also, not surprisingly, how he has scored his goals. So today, I don’t think playing him made sense, and he was mostly invisible. The rest of your post is....weird? Our defense isn’t porous at all - it’s clearly getting better the less we see of Zouma. Look at how our goals were conceded: set pieces. That’s not on our CBs. Without Zouma, we’re quite solid, and many of the goals we’ve conceded is due to our poorly implemented press which leaves our CBs completely exposed. Look at the United game, or the goals we conceded against Wolves - when the opposition is running past your midfield freely, it’s often not on the CBs. (Of course, Lampard doesn’t appear to want to coach set piece defending - that would help.) Our midfield is an issue, but in different contexts. What do we want it to do? Press? Create? It played Liverpool evenly today. That’s a problem? Then you say our issues don’t have anything to do with Mason Mount, but they do - he didn’t play well today. That’s a problem! Then you say that we have to rely on him is an issue. Yes, but you beg the question. What is the issue? The real issue is that we shouldn’t be relying on him because he’s not yet good enough! Building a system with these players around Mason Mount is bad, because Mason Mount is not good enough to justify it. Which makes him a problem. Look at it this way - we have now played two completely different systems in 8 days. And Mount started all 3 games. Seems weird if you’re changing systems. He’s not Messi!
Well, except that he did get into a position to score a goal strictly speaking, that on this occasion went over the bar, so... In this game he didn't contribute as much as he has but since he's been playing he's both scored goals and given assists. Well, on that specific point I tend to agree. I read something the other day about how much his return mattered from injury and I thought then, 'Well, that's probably not a good sign' Except that the game is won by scoring goals and Mount contributes both goals AND assists for others to score goals. I'm not entirely clear what you're saying there, tbh. He's one of the few guys we've got that scores goals from midfield, as I said. Are you saying that doesn't matter?