Hello and welcome to the total soccer show. My name is Daryl Grove and I'm joined by a man whom I assume is happy to be back in studio with me. His name is Taylor Rockwell. Hello. Hello. I am indeed. After several delays, including me leaving all the mics and cables at home. Yes, I'm excited to be back in studio and finally recording.

So we're recovering from our trip to Germany. Yes. And we are slightly less, tightly scheduled than we were in Germany. Slightly less. Yeah, that was an intense round of scheduling. It was very German. I am, that said, slightly more hungover than I was in Germany because Virginia went blue last night. And we were celebrating, and I'm feeling it today. Well, speaking of blue, we have some listener questions today, and the first question is all about a man who wears Blue.

He is.

You want to ask the first question?

I will, because with that in mind, when I tweeted out last night, Virginia is Blue, I got a lot of, like, I thought you were a Man United fan, I thought you were a kickers fan. There was some confusion. Virginia is Everton? Yeah, exactly. And then, yes, some of it was, it makes sense because Pulisic is there now, so you would be blue. Josh Handelman asks, now that Pulisic is starting games for Chelsea and getting goals and assists, can you give any analysis on why he's doing so well? What's he doing right that he wasn't doing

earlier in the season? Ooh, okay. So, I mean, what we got, the hat trick a couple weeks ago,

the goal against Watford. A lot of like secondary assists in that 4-4 draw with Iax. Here's what

I'm seeing. He has a consistent position. So he's most often on the left side of a 4-3-3, and he's receiving the ball, and he's bringing it inside. And the big change from early in the season is when he's dribbling, he's got that drift. Do you know what I'm talking about? That thing where, especially when he starts it on the left, he'll receive the ball, and he'll start running at people, and he'll just sort of drift in in field with the ball and nobody tackles it. It's a special skill that Pulisic displayed at Dortmund and is displaying at Chelsea. And it's that thing of he's just out of reach all the time. You know what I'm saying? He keeps the ball out of reach but accelerates towards the middle. And I think it's starting to cause teams a lot of panic in the Premier League and here's the big difference I see is earlier in the season he would um try dribbling from deep right he'd start dribbling like in his own half and there's just too many bodies and you get tackled and it feels more dangerous right when you lose the ball there um it's and then when he'd get farther at field'd be a bit more conservative, like maybe he'd be a bit, what's sort of, he'd like defer to teammates and pass them the ball. Now it seems like he's all about getting in attacking positions, getting the ball, and then drifting in field from the left into danger areas. Yeah, with that in mind, I would almost say this is one I feel less confident in, but with what you've just said that that all checks out, and it makes me think that what I'm about to say is accurate, which is that I almost think maybe earlier in the season he was trying to do too much, which meant dropping further deep to try to get the ball. Yeah. Because he is still making very aggressive direct runs. It's just now he's starting them further up the field. Yeah. And he's more so part of a quick, rapid counterattack while he stays wide and then drifts inside. And I think because of that, that directness is rewarded more often than starting 30 yards back and trying to run directly. Now you've got more opposition players in front of you. It's going to limit the effectiveness of that approach. Yeah, I think that's right. I think we're saying the same thing, basically, right? Yeah.

So we agree. That's good stuff. We do. I would also add a couple of things. We talked about this previously. Frank Lamport had the very clarifying quote, I think, like a week or two ago about he didn't have any break coming into Chelsea. We had the opportunity. He cut short. He cut short his rest, right? He wanted to like finish with the US and go straight back in. And Lampard was like,

oh, that's great, but you know you're going to finish with the U.S. and go straight back in.

And Lampard was like, oh, that's great, but you know you're going to be tired. Exactly, yes. He was like he was tired. We had people who could already play, so we wanted to give him an opportunity to acclimate. And I do think that was part of it is that he needed time to sort of learn the system, learn his role within the system. To your earlier point, I think it's also that now he has kind of a dedicated area where he tends to operate.

We saw him sometimes central for Chelsea earlier on, and I don't think that benefits him as well as, again, the game against Watford this weekend. He is very much on that touchline and then moves in when the situation requires, but he's starting wide and then drifting more centrally. He's comfortable in his spot, right?

Yes, I think so.

I think that's a big part of it. And I think getting more comfortable is a huge aspect of it for me, that once you start to feel it a little bit more, and you can see that in the shots he's taking and the goals that he's getting. Yeah, especially Burnley. he took some, I'll call them, low percentage shots that kind of came up.

Yeah, but like you have to do that.

And it goes to a point, I think we both have made. Came up Bernie defenders. It's, that I think he's kind of aggressively pursuing 1V-1s. I think that's sort of what Chelsea have been told to do. Like there's the gif of Kurt Zuma when he has the great slaloming dribble from yesterday and then he rockets the ball over the bar. But that still is him taking people on. And I think Lampard wants to see his attackers take people on. Pulisic seemed a little bit hesitant to do that earlier. Now we're seeing it in the wrong place. Or he did in the wrong place. And now I think he's being much more direct and much more self-confident when he tries to take those players on and when you're believing yourself and going at an opponent it's always going to be better than like well I hope this works I also think there's a very basic thing of just he's more used to his teammates and his teammates are more used to him it just all connects a little bit better they're just just more understand more where Pulisik wants to run and he understands where they want to run and things just click a little bit better. They're just, just more, understand more where Pulisic wants to run, and he understands where they want to run, and things just click a little faster, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that's a very basic analysis, but I also think it's true. I think it is too, because, like, you look at the run against Watford that led to his goal this weekend. Yeah. And it's, it might look simple, but it's really, really clever, the way he always stays

goal side, but then he gets away from his defender, but he cuts inside of another defender, and he always makes sure there are gaps open, but he puts himself in the position for the easy kind of lateral pass. I can't remember who provides that pass, but they know that he's going to be there, which is not a thing that you would have said at the start of the season. No, you would not have. and I'm not sure he would have been there either.

And so it's like they may not have played it to him because they may not have known,

but he may not have sort of I'm not sure he would have been there either. And so it's like they may not have played it to him because they may not have known,

but he may not have sort of rewarded that ball had it have come. And this time he makes the direct incisive run, gets on the end of it, finishes it and rewards the manager's faith in him. And I think as long as he continues to do that, he'll continue to play. I think we're enjoying it, right?

We're on a Pulisic high right now.

Polisic's on a high at Chelsea.

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