I think Pulisic could do fine on the right, Chelsea just isn't playing through him. I'd rather he play on whichever side he is going to see more of the ball.
A more experienced manager would identify the issues and adjust his personnel and formation at halftime to free up space for the billion dollars worth of attacking talent on the field. Lampard will probably make like-for-like changes with CHO, Abraham and Ziyech and assume it will work.
Perhaps it’s me just thinking I’m smarter about this game than I am. Perhaps it’s much more difficult to do under the pressure and the spotlight. But it amazes me how often you see managers do absolutely everything they can to avoid the obvious solutions to their teams problems. I won’t accuse them of doing so in some vain attempt to prove they’re smarter than the masses....but sometimes I do wonder.
I think the obvious solution is that managing is hard. I know that sounds simple but I feel like I know a hell of a lot about the game, played at a decently high level, but if you put me in charge of a club I'm pretty sure my analysis, tactics and solutions would be really rudimentary. This is Lampard. I'm sure he knows a LOT more than I do about the game and he still can't get out of his own way. I think Lampard is running into the fact that being a manager at a high level is a lot more difficult than he thought. His thinking is really two-dimensional and the solutions he comes up with are really basic as hell. I know he is intelligent, but he's clearly not smart enough to understand what he doesn't know. I feel like he's looking at all of this and just not grasping why his paper plan isn't working as intended. He's not capable of seeing it.
I think one of the problems with this match is that Timo Werner seems to be still recovering from the game at the w/end. His leg seems to lack oomph.
Chelsea's offense sucks today, but in general they will score goals because they went out and bought a ton of attacking talent. But, a coach shows his worth getting things organized and settling the defense. That's not happening so far.
You can't just throw 6 attacking players on the field and assume everything will work out. That's how Klinsmann got fired at Bayern.
Oh, I don't disagree at all that the issue is defensive, except maybe to say its less "defense" and more "he has no idea how to structure and set up is team so they're incredibly unbalanced and the result is pressure on an average group of defenders and a crap GK". I guess I'm saying the top-heavy set up plays into the overall organizational issues which cause the defensive problems.
sevilla def looks more likely to score in the last 10 minutes here. chelsea looks like a team that doesn't practice. who knows, maybe they don't.