Thomas Tuchel says pre-season is the best time to experiment with tactics after the German trialled Christian Pulisic in a wing-back role against Arsenal.

The Blues beat the Gunners 2-1 at the Emirates thanks to goals from Tammy Abraham and Kai Havertz.

Tuchel played predominantly with a back three last term, using the Cesar Azpilicueta and Reece James at right wing-back and Marcos Alonso and Ben Chilwell on the other side.

James and Azpilicueta are yet to feature for the Blues in pre-season as they’ve been given time off after the European Championships.

Pulisic was therefore deployed to play there in Blues 2-1 victory over the Gunners and the German says he’s always wanted to play the American there since he joined the club.

He played there with me at Dortmund and we played many times like this with Callum,’ said Tuchel.

Marcos wasn’t able to play today so we put Callum on the left side, which I wanted to see from a long time.

‘Callum can maybe be more dangerous from this position coming inside which he loves, and which he did today. So you know our situation.

‘We have Azpi and Reece for this position [right wing-back] but Azpi only started two days ago and Reece hasn’t even started yet.

‘So we need solutions because we start on the 11th against Villarreal and on the 14th is the season. We can’t try things then so now is the time to see.

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‘It was the possibility to give him some minutes and from here we go on.’


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