Chelsea: Pulisic deserves his spot in the starting XI, despite new signings

Christian Pulisic enjoyed a breakout year for Chelsea and he should be rewarded with a starting spot despite the new names joining the club.

Young American phenom Christian Pulisic had a mixed bag of results at the start of the year under Frank Lampard during his debut season. Pulisic went through the struggles synonymous with any emerging talent in the Premier League and spent his time on the bench accordingly.

As the season progressed, Pulisic quickly started justifying the £58 million transfer fee Chelsea spent on him in 2019. Darting runs, a turn of speed that left opposing defenders flailing and a coolness in front of goal all added up to impressive performances flowing regularly from the American star.

Pulisic now faces a bit of a conundrum though. Chelsea has spent a lot of money—around £200 million—on new faces to bolster the starting XI. Nearly all of these additions are attacking players, with Timo Werner, Hakim Ziyech and now Kai Havertz all having to be part of the fold. While Chelsea spent a pretty penny on Pulisic, reason would suggest that you also do not spend close to £200 million on players to sit on the bench. If Ziyech, Havertz and Werner all make the XI, where does that leave Pulisic?

Certainly Pulisic does not deserve to be moved back to the bench. At times, he was Chelsea’s only bright spark during the restart. When either missing through injury or otherwise, his energy and direct attacking play were noticeably lacking in a number of games and Chelsea looked lackluster as a result.

It would seem then that it is obvious that Pulisic has to have a starting role when fit. However, to just assume that would be to ignore the obvious elephant in the room: a certain Mason Mount.

There might not be a player in Chelsea blue right now that Lampard trusts and wants in his team more than Mount. The gaffer showed that throughout the course of the season, establishing Mount as a mainstay in his Chelsea line-up. So much so that Mount was sometimes shifted across to either the left or right wing just so he could get onto the pitch.

Mount is far less impactful when he is playing on either flank compared to how he plays through the middle. However, with the arrival of Ziyech to the right wing, and now Havertz down the middle, that leaves only the left wing up for grabs. Further complicating matters for Pulisic is that Havertz has played striker at times during his career, and Timo Werner has performed very well as a left winger, or at the very least a left-sided striker.

Of course, having to choose between Mount, Pulisic and Werner is a problem that any manager would envy. The question still lingers, will Lampard’s loyalty to keeping Mount in the starting line-up cost Pulisic a spot that he made his own throughout the course of the 2019/20 season? Furthermore, will that make Chelsea weaker as a whole as Mount does not play the wing as well as Pulisic does?

Pulisic has shown that he is more than capable of producing, and doing so consistently, at the Premier League level. Supporters of his will say that he has what it takes to hold down his place in the starting XI and Lampard has shown that he is more than willing to drop players based on how they are training or playing. However, Lampard also loves the energy and willingness to run and commit that Mount brings. Even when the Englishman is off his game, Lampard has stuck with the youngster and more often than not it has paid dividends for the team.

The opportunity is there for Pulisic to make the spot on the left wing his own, but he will need to find the gear that made him so electric last season and find it quickly. The American is certainly someone who is capable of becoming a core component of Chelsea’s fearsome attacking line-up this year. Perhaps it will be this added adversity, this extra layer of competition, that will make Pulisic start turning out every week the glimpses of Eden Hazard-esque play that fans were greeted to in 2019/20.

If that is the case, not only will Chelsea boast an attacking foursome dangerous enough to make all of Europe’s defenders shake, but if you thought Pulisic was a fearsome opponent last season, this could be his best year to date. What is abundantly clear is that the best is yet to come from the American star.