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Frank Lampard’s team “has to start building a winning streak” after their fifth loss of the season, according to the American winger.
Christian Pulisic has admitted that Chelsea “need to show character” and be “smarter” off the ball after their loss to Manchester City.
Pulisic played the full 90 minutes of Chelsea’s 3-1 loss to City at Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon. Frank Lampard’s team found themselves with three fewer goals in the interval after a devastating display in the first half from the visitors, who returned to their best fluency level after having their previous match against Everton canceled due to an increase in coronavirus cases.
Ilkay Gundogan’s thunderous blow from outside the box gave City the lead, before Phil Foden and Kevin de Bruyne produced a pair of classy finishes to leave Chelsea with a mountain to climb.
The hosts worked in vain to get back into the game in the second period and eventually scored a goal through Callum Hudson-Odoi in stoppage time, but a class gulf between the two teams was evident throughout the match.
The Blues have slipped to eighth in the Premier League standings after suffering a fourth loss in their last six games, and Pulisic has launched a rally ahead of the second half of the season with his title challenge now seemingly in smoke.
“We are in a difficult period,” said the USMNT International. Chelsea TV. “It’s going to happen to everyone sometimes and we’ve been in these situations before.
“We have a game next week where we have to start turning it around because we need to start getting results quickly. We will see this game, we will see it as a team and we will see how we can improve. To be easy, but we need to show character now. .
“There are some games coming where we need to turn things around quickly and start putting together a series of results.”
Pulisic added on Chelsea’s overall display against City: “We got goals from a lot of odds and we weren’t prepared to stop that so the first half really disappointed us.
“They were able to beat us in some transitions where we needed to defend better and be a little bit smarter, and then we allowed them to dictate the pace of the game.
“We had to go out again and show character. We are never going to give up, we know we have talented guys and a good team, but we just have to show it, which is what we did in the second half.
“It is not easy to come back three goals against, but it has happened before, so we gave it our all and managed to recover one. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.”
