Christian Pulisic’s influence is growing within the Chelsea team, but he will have a host of summer arrivals to contend with as he looks to keep that momentum going into next season.
Chelsea have wasted no time in strengthening for the 2020-21 campaign, with Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech already confirmed, while on Wednesday the Press Association reported the club were leading the race for Bayer Leverkusen midfielder Kai Havertz.
Add that to reports Chelsea want Ben Chilwell and Declan Rice to bolster their defensive line, and you have a squad Frank Lampard will hope is capable of closing the gap on champions Liverpool as well as Manchester City.
But there must be winners and losers from all this. Werner’s arrival could be detrimental to Tammy Abraham in terms of game time, while attacking midfielder Havertz would pose direct competition for Mason Mount, who has started 29 Premier League games so far this season.
It would be a blow for Abraham and Mount, but the English duo will be out to show Lampard they are worthy of keeping their place in the side as the overall squad undoubtedly improves.
Mount has also been deployed out wide, but the fight for these two positions – either side of the centre-forward when playing 4-3-3 – is only going to get tougher when you consider Ziyech is coming to challenge Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi, and potentially even Willian should the Brazilian stay on next year.
Lampard praises Pulisic’s end product
Pulisic has certainly staked his claim to start regularly in one of the wide roles having come out of the Premier League’s return looking like a man possessed, scoring a goal in three different matches that have all been won by a one-goal margin.
“He’s got great talent,” Lampard said after Pulisic scored in Chelsea’s 3-2 win at Crystal Palace. “He came here in difficult conditions at the start of the season in terms of not having a break but he’s moved his game on to another level – not just in terms of how he’s going by people but he’s got real end product.
“I didn’t put any limits on him so he’s not surprised me. I knew the talent he had and I wanted to help him when he first got here because of the physical nature of the league. I had to manage him and then unfortunately he had quite a bad injury.
“But the hunger that he has, the quality that he’s showing, and the end product has been the most pleasing aspect. Since the restart, he’s been fantastic.
“You look around at the top attacking talent in the world, they score goals regularly that win games and at the moment he’s doing that, so I’m delighted with him.”
Three words to make Chelsea fans shiver are “Eden Hazard replacement”. At the start of the season there was a reluctance to call Pulisic the successor to Hazard given their gulf in quality when the American arrived.
Hazard had at times carried Chelsea, winning six major trophies during his seven seasons in west London, and it was deemed too much of a burden to expect Pulisic to fill the Belgian’s shoes.
By no means has this gap closed completely, but with each match 21-year-old Pulisic is improving and showing it was £58million well spent.
His next mission will be to prove the next batch of arrivals should be complementing him, or that – at the very least – he deserves a share of the spotlight.
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