No Palmer, no party. Chelsea aren’t a one-man team, but they’re probably as close as a side can come to it right now.
Of their 53 league goals this season, 24 have been scored or assisted by Cole Palmer – that’s 45%. In all competitions he he been involved in 31 of 79, nearly 40%. For a single player to have this much impact is almost unprecedented. At his age and stage of relative development in senior football, it is better than even the most ardent followers of his career to date could expect.
On a macro level it is sensational – but also damning in another way of the reliance on a 21-year-old that had started just three league games in his senior career before moving to the club. Against Manchester United this all reached a new peak.
Of the 28 shots that Chelsea took, Palmer created 11 of them and took another nine. His goals came from two penalties and a deflected shot inside the area, but the very aura around him commanded attention.
How even a fatigued, bewildered, and distraught Erik ten Hag side managed to leave perhaps the league’s most in-form player with acres of space from a short corner that entered the box is inquiry-level stuff. It was always going to be Palmer though, who made the difference for Chelsea.
From the 67th minute, when Alejandro Garnacho completed the first of two miraculous turnarounds in the game, Palmer added energy into the performance with everything he did. From the intangible confidence placed on each touch to the meaning behind his passes, the playing of a strategic game in which he was multiple steps ahead of everyone, it was Palmer or nothing.
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He constantly headed over toward the corners of the Matthew Harding Stand with purpose to deliver corners in a way that Mason Mount used to – ironically the supporters applauding him were brandishing No.19 shirts with ‘Judas’ on the back. That Palmer was able to create a huge vacuum for the winner was down to being alert and propelling the game forward ahead of anyone else at the ground.
It was just another layer to his performance, demonstrating intent not to let the emotional chaos of the game overcome him. Not settling for a break in play but instead trying to make each moment his own, Palmer’s entire performance and Chelsea career has been based on volume and efficiency.
In the grand scheme of things it is a minute added detail but one that Chelsea have been lacking for much of the season. Never willing to accept mediocrity – he came through the best version of the Manchester City academy there has ever been, after all – his power to drag a team and stadium along with him on a mission towards victory is unrelenting.
The second of his penalties, this one in the 100th minute, was greeted not with grand celebrations but a rush to get the ball and actually go for an improbable fourth. While remaining the calmest person in the stadium, he also delivered output on a now Eden Hazard-like scale.
Earlier this week football.london wrote that Palmer was matching the most impressive Chelsea players of the past 15 years in terms of his overall impact and also debut season results. The early optics showed that he was already becoming a figure of Hazard-esque importance within two months of arriving, though.
In October it was written that his central role in a 2-0 home defeat to Brentford mirrored the attempts by Hazard to mastermind a performance and a result that his teammates were unable to match. Palmer is now setting new standards of his own.
Albeit with the caveat of already scoring four more penalties than Hazard did during his most fruitful 2018/19 season – 16 goals and 15 assists – Palmer has equalled the Belgian’s best-ever league season at the club. Since 2011, only Diego Costa has more than his 16 so far.
With still nine league games to go, he is within sight of Frank Lampard’s 22 managed from midfield in 2009/10, and that included ten penalties. It is Hazard, though, that is now the more obvious comparison.
Palmer has a way to go to match his best year in terms of goals and assists – and will almost certainly fail to do so, even discounting non-league matches as the disparity in games played is so great – but at 21 he is not expected to be of this level yet. His importance to this young side around him is just as potent though.
Ultimately Pochettino will need to harness more of those around Palmer to bring the success that Hazard was a part of, but there are certainly worse players to rely on than Palmer right now.
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