Graham Potter has some damage to repair at Chelsea. It's not his fault, it's not his mess, but that doesn't matter. The nature of the beast is that it's now his responsibility.
Along with improving the squad morale and relationships, he has to pick up players that wanted to leave the club over the summer and try to get the best out of them on the pitch in order to extract results at a vital period of the season.
There is no way around it. With 13 games across two competitions in the next six weeks, Potter will need all the help available to him. His squad is big enough and he won't be receiving any sympathy from rival managers considering the quality and resources available to him.
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One of the players he needs to utilise is Christian Pulisic. The American has had a largely frustrating Chelsea career in general and is now on his fourth manager since a deal was agreed to sign him in early 2019 under Maurizio Sarri. Injuries, poor form, positional movements and plenty else have all had a factor, but the bottom line is nobody has consistently got the best out of a player that was one of the most exciting teenagers around, six years ago.
The issue for Pulisic now is how much has gone before him and the long road he faces to get into a starting XI. He has had this before. Thomas Tuchel, the man who gave Pulisic his chance on the Champions League stage, was meant to be the turning point, that never happened. Now Pulisic is as unhappy as he has been at Stamford Bridge.
He pushed for a move all summer but nothing came of it. He's not an immediate starter under Potter and his substitute roles have so far been limited to cameos, often coming at wing-back. He may get the chance to prove everyone wrong before the World Cup, and that's the hope of former United States forward Eric Wynalda - who claims that Tuchel and Pulisic at Chelsea was always going to be a difficult match.
Speaking to VegasInsider, Wynalda said: "Well he’s got a new lease of life that’s for sure with Tuchel being gone." He then went on to state that the relationship between the pair wasn't as good as it seemed publicly.
He added: "That storyline goes all the way back to that shirt behind me in Dortmund when Tuchel was the manager underneath Klopp. In fact he was one of the youth coaches and he got in a fight with Christian Pulisic and they’ve just never been able to bury the hatchet.
"So they haven’t liked each other ever. And that was probably the main source of why he was always out of selection and why Mason Mount was getting more time than he was."
Pulisic's frustration has been clear to see this season on the field but off it, he made a bold move to write a book about his career so far in which he openly criticised Tuchel and his decisions, including a story about being dropped for the Champions League semi-final second leg against Real Madrid.
The 24-year-old is now Potter's responsibility, and getting everything he can from the attacker is a priority. It's one he didn't ask for, but it's one he must resolve.
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