Analyse this Philidor line

Please I need help on ideas for white on this philidor line: 1.e4 e5 2.|Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 c5 5.Ng5 Nh6 6.Qf3 Qe2 7.0-0 f6.

i think white has some advantage in this line but i have not been able to prove that over the board. My score is about +3=2-7 here. Should I give up the variation?

lol thanks for the excellent NM advice.

Why not show us your games in this line? It's white to move, at least what do you play after 7. ... f6? (I am assuming the line is really 6. ... Qe7).

I looked a bit at 8. h4. If black takes the knight, 8. ... fxg5 9. Bxg5 it becomes very difficult for black to develop either bishop. The queen has to always guard f7 because of the threat Bxh6 and Qf7+.

It's probably very hard to give a concrete winning line in such a complicated position.

I have a hard time seeing why white should have an advantage here. (I'd like to see the games you played in this line too.) White has gambited away a pawn, and the center, for pressure on f7 -- and presumably some sort of attack... which in this kind of position usually means opening up the center... But Black's extra pawn makes opening up the center extra difficult.  Some combination of e5 and h4 and Re1 (even sacing the R on e5) looks like the attacking way to go... but as far as I can tell White is a few tempi short of getting anything going. Black has time to develop and put his house in order before major disruptions occur.

The other alternative is to retreat the N. It has one square, h3... Nh3 is an interesting move -- it leaves Black the mistake Bxh3?! (which is a tempting move to the simplification-minded player (simple-minded?) like me) -- it leaves White very strong on the light squares, the open 3rd rank gives White's queen lots of tactical mobility, and white has some immediate tactical shots arising from Qc8+) but if Black does just about anything else, i think he's fine. I don't see how White makes enough trouble to justify the headache black's central pawns present.

As with all patzer-generated (aka my) analysis  I'm curious to know if better players/engines, agree with these assessments.

 5.Ng5 struck me as premature too...  but I'd be surprised if the position is all that far gone for Black...

What are these authoritative places? You can get an engine to crunch it of course, but what's the fun (or the explanation) in that? The chess.com game explorer leaves this line  with 6.c3 ...  in Kieseritzsky vs. Whitcomb (1851)

That leaves 6.Qf3 a novelty to the chess.com database -- my 3.8 mil game database which i keep up to date with TWIC also sees 6.Qf3 as a novelty (it doesn't find the Kieseritzsky game, it finds an amateur game played in 2002). Where is it he should go for the authority on what appears to me to be a very minor line?

From what I can tell 6.c3 is the "mainline" of this variation (there's nothing main about it... it's a philidor sideline to be sure... ) There are some fun games by old time great Cochrane and also Em lasker vs NN in the 6.c3 branch... and the following game (which transposes to the 6.c3 position via a very different move order) is quite a sparkly little miniature IMO:

True enough, JG.  I just get so used to seeing "What do I do after 1 e4 c5?" that sometimes I don't even look at the actual post! lol.

I figured that was what happened! But I was little scared you were to going to yell something like, "Page 987 of TKO (Totally Kwazy Openings) by Basman has 19 columns on this!"

I don't disagree that 5.c3 is the best move there... but it's not an obvious move to me at all. I wish that was a natural move for me. My first twitch inclination is always to develop another piece.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. I will try some other ideas in my games.