Voorhesian

What a player. Underestimated again and he pops up and makes a goose of Stones and Macguire. 
Should have never sold him!

It is a defensive formation.  It covers for a weak defense.  Offensively it stifles creativity as the three forward players crowd  into a narrow front with the wingbacks lobbing crosses in.  There is a reason that every elite team other than PSG do not use it.

It is a defensive formation.  It covers for a weak defense.  Offensively it stifles creativity as the three forward players crowd  into a narrow front with the wingbacks lobbing crosses in.  There is a reason that every elite team other than PSG do not use it.

I have to ask, did Pulisic screw your wife or something? 

I have to ask, did Pulisic screw your wife or something? 

How is this a valid comparison at all.  Toussard is six years older than Pulisic, and a sizable percentage of his 96 career goals came playing in the second tier of Belgian football.  He did not start scoring in the top tier of the Belgian league until he was 23 (same age as Pulisic is now) and even then was scoring at rates similar to what Pulisic is  doing in the far more difficult EPL.    He arrived in the EPL when he was 25 and scored all of five goals on 31 appearances in all competitions.  In comparison, Public's first year in the EPL he was 20, and he scored 11 goals in all competitions (9 league) on 30 appearances.  I'm digressing here, but everyone on this forum complains about lack of output, but they fail to take age into account.  Pulisic's first year at Chelsea he outperformed Hazard, Salah, Stearling, Thieryy Henry and most other wingers I could find when they were twenty. To be fair, Hazard did have a breakout hear in France when he was 21, but his first year in the EPL at age 22, he scored same number of league goals that Pulisic did in his first EPL year, and only two more non-league goals than Pulisc.  Heck, when Drogba was 20, he was playing in the second tier of France, and scoring exactly zero goals.  The last two seasons have been injury plagued years, spent mostly in a system that does not favor a traditional winger.  If you don't think system matters, look at Henry's career.  When he was 22, he was playing for Juventus in a 3 back system where he was often asked to play wing-back.  (Sound familiar?)  At Juventus he scored all of 3 goals.  The next year he moved to Arsenal, where he played in a system that was better suited for his skill set, and he scored 26 goals in all competitions. Can Pulisic eventually become as good as these players?  Is batman a transvestite? Who knows.  Nobody on this forum does, that's for sure.   It may be he turns out like Alexander Pato, a guy whose graham cracker-like hamstrings destroyed his career.  He may recover and have a great career.  More likely, he ends up with good career numbers, better than Toussard, somewhere below the Hazards, Salahs, and Henrys of the world. It is just too early to tell.   

Its a little deeper than that.  This team has all the hallmarks of a team that is "over-coached" in the sense that there is a such fear of going off script and inducing coaching ire, that players lose their creative instincts.  I'll use one example to explain my point.  Against West Ham, there were multiple instances of an attacking player passing the ball back and then making an angled run to space on the outside of the pitch.  Pulisic must have done it 10 to 15 times, Stearling at least six, and there were others.  Each time that happened, not once was the ball played onto the open space for the attacker to go get, and thus have an opportunity to attack the goal with the defense off balance.  Instead, every single time, the ball was then played back into the center, just above the box.  Since there were multiple different players doing this, it was obviously a coached sequence.  In the abstract the play has merit, the angled run to the outside should drag a defender wide and create space for the ball to be played from the central position to a more central run.  However it only works if the defender does go with the initial angled run. If the ball never goes to the runner, there is nothing to keep the defender honest, and they will simply let the runner go and cheat to the center; which is exactly what happened.   No player appeared willing to break script and actually play it to the open space, when that was the play to make because the defenders were ignoring the runner.  I have seen this fear of pissing a coach off with many youth teams over the years, but never have I seen signs of it in professional ranks.  But the symptoms are all there. The result is very little creativity, and the appearance of players being mere "passengers," which in effect they are.   If you want aggressive movement of the ball up the field quickly, players must be given the freedom to take chances, break script, without fear of being berated if it doesn't work out. 

Its a little deeper than that.  This team has all the hallmarks of a team that is "over-coached" in the sense that there is a such fear of going off script and inducing coaching ire, that players lose their creative instincts.  I'll use one example to explain my point.  Against West Ham, there were multiple instances of an attacking player passing the ball back and then making an angled run to space on the outside of the pitch.  Pulisic must have done it 10 to 15 times, Stearling at least six, and there were others.  Each time that happened, not once was the ball played onto the open space for the attacker to go get, and thus have an opportunity to attack the goal with the defense off balance.  Instead, every single time, the ball was then played back into the center, just above the box.  Since there were multiple different players doing this, it was obviously a coached sequence.  In the abstract the play has merit, the angled run to the outside should drag a defender wide and create space for the ball to be played from the central position to a more central run.  However it only works if the defender does go with the initial angled run. If the ball never goes to the runner, there is nothing to keep the defender honest, and they will simply let the runner go and cheat to the center; which is exactly what happened.   No player appeared willing to break script and actually play it to the open space, when that was the play to make because the defenders were ignoring the runner.  I have seen this fear of pissing a coach off with many youth teams over the years, but never have I seen signs of it in professional ranks.  But the symptoms are all there. The result is very little creativity, and the appearance of players being mere "passengers," which in effect they are.   If you want aggressive movement of the ball up the field quickly, players must be given the freedom to take chances, break script, without fear of being berated if it doesn't work out. 

Its a little deeper than that.  This team has all the hallmarks of a team that is "over-coached" in the sense that there is a such fear of going off script and inducing coaching ire, that players lose their creative instincts.  I'll use one example to explain my point.  Against West Ham, there were multiple instances of an attacking player passing the ball back and then making an angled run to space on the outside of the pitch.  Pulisic must have done it 10 to 15 times, Stearling at least six, and there were others.  Each time that happened, not once was the ball played onto the open space for the attacker to go get, and thus have an opportunity to attack the goal with the defense off balance.  Instead, every single time, the ball was then played back into the center, just above the box.  Since there were multiple different players doing this, it was obviously a coached sequence.  In the abstract the play has merit, the angled run to the outside should drag a defender wide and create space for the ball to be played from the central position to a more central run.  However it only works if the defender does go with the initial angled run. If the ball never goes to the runner, there is nothing to keep the defender honest, and they will simply let the runner go and cheat to the center; which is exactly what happened.   No player appeared willing to break script and actually play it to the open space, when that was the play to make because the defenders were ignoring the runner.  I have seen this fear of pissing a coach off with many youth teams over the years, but never have I seen signs of it in professional ranks.  But the symptoms are all there. The result is very little creativity, and the appearance of players being mere "passengers," which in effect they are.   If you want aggressive movement of the ball up the field quickly, players must be given the freedom to take chances, break script, without fear of being berated if it doesn't work out. 

Its a little deeper than that.  This team has all the hallmarks of a team that is "over-coached" in the sense that there is a such fear of going off script and inducing coaching ire, that players lose their creative instincts.  I'll use one example to explain my point.  Against West Ham, there were multiple instances of an attacking player passing the ball back and then making an angled run to space on the outside of the pitch.  Pulisic must have done it 10 to 15 times, Stearling at least six, and there were others.  Each time that happened, not once was the ball played onto the open space for the attacker to go get, and thus have an opportunity to attack the goal with the defense off balance.  Instead, every single time, the ball was then played back into the center, just above the box.  Since there were multiple different players doing this, it was obviously a coached sequence.  In the abstract the play has merit, the angled run to the outside should drag a defender wide and create space for the ball to be played from the central position to a more central run.  However it only works if the defender does go with the initial angled run. If the ball never goes to the runner, there is nothing to keep the defender honest, and they will simply let the runner go and cheat to the center; which is exactly what happened.   No player appeared willing to break script and actually play it to the open space, when that was the play to make because the defenders were ignoring the runner.  I have seen this fear of pissing a coach off with many youth teams over the years, but never have I seen signs of it in professional ranks.  But the symptoms are all there. The result is very little creativity, and the appearance of players being mere "passengers," which in effect they are.   If you want aggressive movement of the ball up the field quickly, players must be given the freedom to take chances, break script, without fear of being berated if it doesn't work out. 

Its a little deeper than that.  This team has all the hallmarks of a team that is "over-coached" in the sense that there is a such fear of going off script and inducing coaching ire, that players lose their creative instincts.  I'll use one example to explain my point.  Against West Ham, there were multiple instances of an attacking player passing the ball back and then making an angled run to space on the outside of the pitch.  Pulisic must have done it 10 to 15 times, Stearling at least six, and there were others.  Each time that happened, not once was the ball played onto the open space for the attacker to go get, and thus have an opportunity to attack the goal with the defense off balance.  Instead, every single time, the ball was then played back into the center, just above the box.  Since there were multiple different players doing this, it was obviously a coached sequence.  In the abstract the play has merit, the angled run to the outside should drag a defender wide and create space for the ball to be played from the central position to a more central run.  However it only works if the defender does go with the initial angled run. If the ball never goes to the runner, there is nothing to keep the defender honest, and they will simply let the runner go and cheat to the center; which is exactly what happened.   No player appeared willing to break script and actually play it to the open space, when that was the play to make because the defenders were ignoring the runner.  I have seen this fear of pissing a coach off with many youth teams over the years, but never have I seen signs of it in professional ranks.  But the symptoms are all there. The result is very little creativity, and the appearance of players being mere "passengers," which in effect they are.   If you want aggressive movement of the ball up the field quickly, players must be given the freedom to take chances, break script, without fear of being berated if it doesn't work out. 

Its a little deeper than that.  This team has all the hallmarks of a team that is "over-coached" in the sense that there is a such fear of going off script and inducing coaching ire, that players lose their creative instincts.  I'll use one example to explain my point.  Against West Ham, there were multiple instances of an attacking player passing the ball back and then making an angled run to space on the outside of the pitch.  Pulisic must have done it 10 to 15 times, Stearling at least six, and there were others.  Each time that happened, not once was the ball played onto the open space for the attacker to go get, and thus have an opportunity to attack the goal with the defense off balance.  Instead, every single time, the ball was then played back into the center, just above the box.  Since there were multiple different players doing this, it was obviously a coached sequence.  In the abstract the play has merit, the angled run to the outside should drag a defender wide and create space for the ball to be played from the central position to a more central run.  However it only works if the defender does go with the initial angled run. If the ball never goes to the runner, there is nothing to keep the defender honest, and they will simply let the runner go and cheat to the center; which is exactly what happened.   No player appeared willing to break script and actually play it to the open space, when that was the play to make because the defenders were ignoring the runner.  I have seen this fear of pissing a coach off with many youth teams over the years, but never have I seen signs of it in professional ranks.  But the symptoms are all there. The result is very little creativity, and the appearance of players being mere "passengers," which in effect they are.   If you want aggressive movement of the ball up the field quickly, players must be given the freedom to take chances, break script, without fear of being berated if it doesn't work out.