After a 1-1 draw with an Aston Villa side that has been surprisingly much better than most people have expected, Chelsea FC are now owners of just one win in their last six, across all competitions.
There have not been many bright spots as of late, for the Blues, but one of them is certainly Christian Pulisic. He’s now finally back to full fitness, logging 354 minutes and starting four matches, the most workload he’s put in since he started six straight games in Project Restart.
“Christian was really bright all game,” said Chelsea manager Frank Lampard.
“That’s great for him, fitness-wise, to play two games in such a short space of time. He created plenty of chances, he had an opportunity himself when he hit the side-netting and it looked like it was in but overall, he was really bright.”
Monday night was the second straight start in which Pulisic went the full match. The 22-year-old United States international has been held back by chronic hamsting injuries this season, forcing him to miss several weeks of action.
While we haven’t seen the same player that we saw during Project Restart, when he tore up the league, but Pulisic is still making positive contributions, at a time when we cannot say the same for so many of his teammates.
Chelsea are languishing in sixth place, with all but one of the teams ahead of them having at least one game in hand on the Blues. Two of the five actually have two matches in hand on the west London club. Earlier in the season, one could explain Chelsea’s failure to launch as due to injuries.
But what’s the excuse now? This run of form, and place in the table is definitely not what Roman Abramovich thought he was buying when he spent 220 million GBP to improve a side that finished in the top four last season.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.