Christian Pulisic is “injury-plagued” to say the least. A nasty adductor problem, which began on New Year’s Day, took away a big chunk of his first season at Chelsea. This season, a hamstring injury suffered in the FA Cup final on August 1, and then a relapse of that issue on Halloween has limited him to just five total appearances.
He also has not played for the United States Men’s National Team in 2020. However, the £58 million man, the most expensive American in history, is finally fit and available for selection tomorrow.
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Chelsea host Tottenham Hotspur in the biggest match of the Premier League weekend, and Blues boss Frank Lampard has confirmed the availability of the American.
“Christian Pulisic is back into contention and fitness,” Lampard said to his prematch news conference.
“He’s fit, ready to start is a question mark. It is hard to gauge match fitness.
In training, times as they are with COVID, it is very hard to recreate match play in training because the rest of the players are preparing for games every three days and we didn’t have any academy games that we could mix bubbles.”
“So, every player, not just Christian, coming back from fitness, it is more difficult to get them ready to start games, so we will see.”
Lampard made a very important part there- when guys are rehabbing from injury, they can’t just get games with the youth team now, because of COVID. The convalescing recovery playing time has to come from elsewhere.
Pulisic was a bit injury-plagued at Borussia Dortmund, before he came over to Chelsea. So the London club did realize there was some risk in investing in him.
Hopefully, for the sake of all involved, his persistent injury issues will start to subside now. As for tomorrow, don’t expect to see him in a larger role.
From what Lampard confirmed, he’s likely to be eased back into it, coming off the bench, instead of starting and playing 90.
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.