According to former Chelsea midfielder Craig Burley, Christian Pulisic has shown that he is more than good enough to fend off added competition for places at Chelsea following the arrivals of Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz.
Burley told ESPN: “I think he’s good enough and has shown that. Towards the end of the season he was arguably the first name on the team sheet.
“He is just going to have to play well. That’s what you want when you’re at a big club. You have to play well because when you look over your shoulder, you have competition for places. That’s great.
“You look at Liverpool at the moment, we are seeing some criticism of Liverpool – albeit how successful they have been – that so far [Jurgen] Klopp has not gone out and spent big to bring people in to challenge Sadio Mane, challenge Mo Salah, to challenge Roberto Firmino, to challenge all these players to be better than they were last season.
“I think that’s what Chelsea have at the moment, they have players that are going to challenge the likes of Christian Pulisic, who if you have three or four average games then you are out of the team.
“But he has easily shown in his time at Chelsea that when he is fully fit, he is good enough to hold down a place in this team. He has been excellent but Frank Lampard will be saying to him ‘I want more of the same, I want to see the change of pace, I want to see the taking people on and I want to see what you showed at the end of last season as well – that better end product’.
“We saw the goals from Christian Pulisic, which were excellent – the one at Liverpool, the one at Wembley – so if he reproduces that, not an issue.”