I think Pozuelo's problems are a combination of his own and the team's.

When people are moving, getting open, thinking ahead, then he has often still looked decent this season (although not as good as in the past). Some games when Poz was playing, teammates seemed to stop and watch him, and opponents had no problem triple-teaming him, or cutting off any available passes. It's a chicken-egg thing: sometimes people stop and stare because Poz holds the ball too long. Sometimes Poz holds the ball too long because nobody is thinking ahead and getting open. Occasionally this season I have had no idea what the team's offensive strategy is. But then again, in the last game they moved the ball pretty well w/o Poz.


Problems that are definitely more Poz's own issues: in addition to sometimes holding the ball too long, so many of his passes have been off or too soft this season. Even some short easy passes. He seems to overthink it, maybe he's not feeling confident so a short pass is mishit.

Another issue is related: it's been there longer but seems to be getting worse. So many of Poz's shots and passes are chips rather than ever putting his laces through it. He had some early success with chipped goals in MLS, and then just seemed to get addicted to them. Past highlights show him putting long / hard shots on net in Belgium: what happened? And chipped passes don't work so well against hard-pressing MLS opponents: those passes are too slow and easy to intercept.