According to the Athletic, Pulisic is nearing a return to first team training (5th paragraph below). The article also highlights Pulisic's impact in the attacking third...
Chelsea are not panicking just yet. But Pulisic’s return cannot come soon enough
https://theathletic.com/1639075/2020/02/27/christian-pulisic-chelsea-bayern/?source=shared-article
Perhaps the most depressing thing about Chelsea’s heaviest-ever European home defeat was that, on the biggest stage of the season, so little of what has shone brightest in Frank Lampard’s team was on show.
This was not the vibrant young Chelsea who briefly became the feel-good story of the Premier League with a seven-match winning streak in the autumn; the average age of Lampard’s starting XI on Tuesday night was 27.2, opponents Bayern Munich’s was 26.7. Naivety may have undone the home side, but very little of it was of the youthful variety.
Mason Mount and Reece James started the biggest game of their young careers, but top scorer Tammy Abraham was confined to the bench by a lingering ankle injury that ultimately led to him limping out of the post-match warm-down. Fikayo Tomori, who performed with startling composure in the Champions League group stage victory away to Ajax in October, watched this last-16 first leg as a substitute.
Callum Hudson-Odoi was not risked due to a hamstring problem, while Lampard decided this was not the moment to give Ruben Loftus-Cheek his first competitive minutes in nine months. The only sighting of Christian Pulisic, Chelsea’s marquee arrival last summer, came ahead of kick-off as he mingled on the Stamford Bridge touchline in street clothes.
On that front, however, the news is more positive: sources have told The Athletic that Pulisic is nearing a return to first-team training after almost two months on the sidelines with an adductor injury, and is confident of being able to make a meaningful contribution to the defining stretch of Chelsea’s top-four campaign in the Premier League.
When taken in conjunction with Lampard’s confidence that Hudson-Odoi will not be out for much longer and the fact that Loftus-Cheek is in the final stages of his lengthy recovery from a ruptured achilles, it is clear that Chelsea will soon be in a position to recapture some of the youthful vigour that has drained away from them in these difficult opening weeks of 2020.
Those who know Pulisic say he is itching to get back onto the pitch. When he left a training session at Cobham in visible pain on January 4, there was no cause to fear he would miss this much time. By the end of the month he felt good again, and together with Chelsea medical staff the decision was taken to increase the intensity of his training – but his body wasn’t ready.
“We tried to get him out there last week, to step it up a little bit, but we had to pull out of that,” Lampard said of Pulisic after Chelsea’s draw with Leicester. “The (February) break might have come at a good time, it buys us a couple of weeks.
“Of course you miss him. He’s a quality player and he was having a really good patch pre-Christmas. Others have to stand up too, but we’ll be happy when he’s back.”
It wasn’t a setback as such, simply a young athlete discovering how his body was responding to an injury that can often prove difficult to shake off. Matches against Manchester United, Tottenham and Bayern after the February break also came too soon for Pulisic, but all parties are optimistic that he can still have a strong finish to a promising first season in English football.
That is just as well, because Chelsea have missed Pulisic even more than he has missed playing. Remarkably, his five goals in 16 appearances still have him in second place alongside Mason Mount in the club’s Premier League scoring chart, despite the fact that he has not featured in the competition since New Years’ Day.
None of Lampard’s other wingers currently offer the goal threat that Pulisic provides. His 3.35 shot attempts per 90 minutes in the Premier League this season is second only to Abraham among regular Chelsea starters, while his expected goals per 90 minutes (xG90) of 0.54 also ranks second to the club’s top scorer.
Pulisic may only have five Premier League goals to show from an xG of 6.47, but his rating for expected goals on target (xGOT) – a metric which factors in how difficult a shot attempt is to save, as well as the quality of the scoring chance – is actually 7.47, which suggests he has been denied another two goals by above-average goalkeeping.
When fit, Pulisic has been Chelsea’s most consistent secondary scoring threat after Abraham — a status he underlined with a dazzling run of six goals in seven matches across all competitions in October and November, punctuated by a perfect hat-trick against Burnley at Turf Moor.
“I know what a good player he is — I see that first hand,” Lampard said of Pulisic after his Burnley heroics. “There are things he has to learn and improve because he’s just turned 21, it’s the same with all young players. There are things that he’s going to work on and I think he knows it and he knows that I’m driving that daily in training.
“The way he’s trained in the past few weeks, and the impact he’s had when playing, he’s said to everyone, ‘here I am’ and what talent he does have. I’m really pleased for him. It’s what we need from all our attacking players; to be a threat, to play like that, have a ruthless edge about how they finish and he showed the full package.”
Lampard wants goals as well as creation from his wingers, and his talent for darting intelligently into the penalty area has helped Pulisic come closest to realising that vision. He leads all regular Chelsea starters by averaging 7.35 touches in the opposition box per 90 minutes in the Premier League, even ahead of Abraham (6.25).
Hudson-Odoi, third on the list with 5.85 touches in the opposition box per 90 minutes, is still learning the art of moving without the ball, but his first Premier League goal against Burnley last month – a close-range finish from Cesar Azpilicueta’s in-swinging cross – showed signs of progress.
“For Callum to score in the six-yard box is far more exciting for me than for him to score from 35 yards, without a doubt,” Lampard said after the match. “Because it means that he’s prepared to run the extra bit to sprint in there. And that wasn’t the only time he did it; he did it on one of the early chances we had in the first half.
“He was doing it, recovering, going higher up the pitch at the right times, and his overall performance was an absolute statement for Callum of what he needs to do. That was the real Callum Hudson-Odoi and what he can be, and there’s obviously more to come.
“But I thought his goal was brilliant for him and if he can carry on doing that, then that’s a serious player we have in Callum.”
Pulisic and Hudson-Odoi are both regarded as pillars of Chelsea’s long-term plan. Lampard could have used their speed and invention either from the start or the bench against Bayern, but there will be plenty more opportunities for them to make an impact in what remains of this season — and that is why no panic accompanied the disappointment of Tuesday’s humiliation.
Chelsea were pragmatic when the draw for the Champions League round of 16 was made. The expectation was that Bayern were a vastly superior team, and the gulf in class was borne out on the Stamford Bridge pitch. There has been no internal criticism of Lampard’s tactics for the match or his comments afterwards, because of the shared realisation of just how far this rebuild has to go.
A significant number of the players who featured are likely in their final months at Chelsea. Olivier Giroud, Pedro, Willy Caballero and Willian are all out of contract at the end of the season, and there is no indication that the Brazilian will be offered the three-year extension he is asking for. As reported by The Athletic in December, sizeable offers for Ross Barkley will be considered.
Bayern’s brilliance underlined the need for change and that is coming to Stamford Bridge this summer, with Pulisic, new signing Hakim Ziyech and Lampard’s ‘Class of 19’ in line to form the core of what remains. While painful viewing for many, Tuesday night was little more than an ugly snapshot of where Chelsea would be without the bright young pieces they intend to build around.[/quote]
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