Jase

Bremen have played the COVID-19 quarantine rule card with Josh Sargent. https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-usa/story/4227223/werder-bremen-declines-to-release-josh-sargent-for-usmnt-friendlies-citing-covid-19-protocols We should definitely find some ways to do the same...

We definitely need a viable backup to them, especially Mendy and Chilwell, next summer or January if possible. Can't be having Emerson or Alonso starting important games for us for example!

Lampard confirmed that Pulisic won't be back this weekend. Trained lightly in midweek but had to stop because he didn't feel comfortable. Might have to skip the USMNT now...

Worth noting that Werner has played 971 minutes out of 1080 (11/12 games), which is more than anyone else in the squad so far this season. That's 42 minutes more than second-highest Zouma (929) and the third-highest Kante (815).

https://www.chelseafc.com/en/news/2020/11/06/werner-strike-nominated-for-goal-of-the-month Werner's first goal against Southampton nominated for the Premier League Goal of the Month.

The virus may not even show up in players when the test is being done given there is an incubation period. We should be minimizing the risk of players getting the virus as much as possible (on top of not being overplayed) but here we are, trying to increase the risks. And this is not about playing 'what ifs'. It's about taking pre-emptive measures, making pre-emptive decisions rather than only react to it when it's too late.

We've gone through this before. Going from one team's bubble to another is always gonna be risky because we don't know how the other team's procedure and protocols over the virus. As we have seen across the top leagues or leagues within a country, the procedure and protocols aren't the same. Some appear to be done less rigorously than others. What happens if one country plays another smaller country and that smaller country don't have a proper testing in place and their players happen to have the virus, end up affecting the other team's players? Then what? That's not true and you know it. We have seen many cases among clubs in Serie A, Ligue 1 recently. We have also seen an outbreak at Shakhtar Donetsk, Dynamo Kiev, Ajax for example that forced them to play weakened teams in the Champions League. There are also other examples.

No Werner against Czech Republic (Nov 11). Will play only against Ukraine (Nov 14) and Spain (Nov 17).

As expected, Havertz not called up to the Germany NT squad...

How about not playing during this second wave, third wave or whatever of the pandemic that has forced countries to go into lockdown again? How about letting players finish the season with their club and let them go play all those international games with their country in the lead-up to the Euros next year (similar to what happened after the restart last season at club level with the domestic and European competitions), instead of risking everyone's health with all the unnecessary travelling, going from one team's bubble to another etc? If we want to play international football right now, fine, then play only the competitive matches. Why have another stupid friendly on top of the competitive games? International managers, especially, often complain about players being worn out by the time they get to a summer tournament and all and here they are, organizing a friendly, a needless match that risks the players to the virus, to injury etc in this already congested season. How is this even logical? Like it or not, the pandemic has forced people to change the way they do things, has forced people to adapt to the circumstances, has maybe forced people to do things in a way that they probably don't normally do. People shouldn't act like everything is still normal and try to force things to look normal right now. Nothing is normal at the moment.

To say CHO "literally loses ever 1 v 1 battle" is clearly an exaggeration. The problem with CHO coming on in matches when we're leading by a good margin is the rest of the players could be just coasting by then, especially in this congested season where energy conservation would be key. How can one expect him to make proper impact if the team as a whole just want to kill the game off and not go for the jugular, for example.

1. Still don't understand how these international matches are being played during this pandemic. 2. Still don't understand how the national teams thought it would be a great idea to organize an unnecessary friendly, on top of the other two matches, in this congested season, in the middle of a fucking pandemic.

Careful now. You have people who want to turn it into some kind of war, hate between the two.

Hard to come in and perform in the limited time given, knowing he's under pressure to do so. Even when CHO has done alright, he would still get dropped anyway in the next game and has been dropped for a non-winger to play in his position.

Just watched that and it doesn't sound like Pulisic will be back this weekend...

Exactly...then why did you even argue back?

If anyone is interested, there will be a special Q&A with Pulisic and chat with Bruce Buck... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXkHsmrTHM

Makes no sense.

Seriously, what has this gotta do with experience? It's just down to simple coaching and organization. If the opposing team leave 1 player upfront, then you have 2 players at the back - 1 to deal with that player and the other to cover. But in this case, the players who were supposed to stay back and defend for United just went AWOL - one of them was Matic (is he inexperienced!?). This shouldn't be happening in professional football, never mind the Champions League, and it was only in the 12th minute!

I used to do that or something similar but then I just got lazy of finding a picture. I'll probably change if/when we stop winning. After all, we have only 1 loss this season (excluding pens) with that as the main image.

Couldn't resist again, can you? Penalties or not, goals are goals. If Abraham had been the one scoring those penalties, you would be going gaga over him here. Furthermore, it's great that we are winning penalties and scoring them. Helps us to win games more convincingly and you to boast about Lampard! Does Werner have room to improve? Of course but at the same time, you can't say that Lampard needs time to work with the attacking players or that we will do better when the attacking players players return when we had dodgy results earlier and then turn around to criticize Werner for not doing enough. I don't think our attack has fully clicked yet, despite the recent wins, and not to mention, Lampard was shuffling players around a bit earlier this season. Werner has been playing between ST and LW. Havertz RW, False 9, #10, #8. Pulisic RW and LW. Ziyech RW. Mount LW, RW and #8. As for Jota, well, he had the benefit of going into a settled side. If Werner had gone there instead, he would have likely scored similar or the same amount of goals by now. We weren't fielding a settled looking side until more recently and even then, there's still a bit of shuffling around and players are still getting to know one another. And to quote a certain 20-time tennis Grand Slam champion...

You want me to jinx Werner!?