2 hours ago
24
Cole Palmer is set to take on his former club Manchester City for the seventh time since joining Chelsea this afternoon as he looks for his first victory at Stamford Bridge
From Manchester City's point of view, selling Cole Palmer to Chelsea, at the time, looked to be a great piece of business.
Back in September 2023, the Blues signed the now 23-year-old, who was 21 at the time, for £42.5million (£40m + £2.5m in add-ons) and put Palmer out of his misery in Manchester. Pep Guardiola admitted in April 2024 that Palmer was on his case for two years, asking to leave the club because of a lack of first-team minutes.
Even with Riyad Mahrez departing that summer, City still had the likes of Jack Grealish, Jeremy Doku, Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden to choose from in the positions Palmer could play. Guardiola handed Palmer his senior debut in 2020 and in the period following that, the City boss used the Manchester-born youngster 40 more times in the space of the next three years.
FOLLOW OUR CHELSEA FB PAGE! Latest Blues news, analysis and much more via our dedicated Facebook page
Palmer's frustration was understandable. While he had seen Foden break through the academy at City and become an integral part of the senior team's success, given the amount of money the club spend on attacking options, Palmer thought moving away would be the necessary next step for his career.
Chelsea, with their youth-focused project, were prepared to take - what was at the time - a gamble on Palmer. It was a lot of money for a young player who had bags of potential but was yet to explode during his time at the Etihad Stadium.
It was up to Chelsea to find the detonate button and in the 2023/24 campaign, Palmer's debut season in west London, he went 'bang'. Under Mauricio Pochettino, Palmer was used on the right wing but it was very much a free role to allow the City academy graduate the chance to express himself on the pitch.
Palmer ended his debut season at Stamford Bridge with 25 goals in all competitions, 22 of them coming in the Premier League. In the two seasons that have followed, Palmer has managed just 24 goals combined. Whatever Pochettino was doing in relation to Palmer, it worked.
This season, granted, he has struggled with a complex groin injury throughout the campaign, a problem that requires day-by-day assessment and care. Palmer, though, revealed earlier this week he believes he has now turned a corner in relation to his fitness - something head coach Liam Rosenior is delighted with: "If Cole feels that, that's great.
"Cole, as I've said many times before, is a top player who's gone through a really difficult period in terms of injury, in terms of the amount of games that he's had. What I'm seeing in Cole now is a brightness, a freshness, and hopefully he can maintain that between now and the end of the season."
Palmer has struck 10 times this season - with nine of them coming in the Premier League - in what looks set to be his lowest tally in terms of goal contributions since he joined the club. That is unless, of course, he can find the back of the net eight times between now and the end of the campaign.
This afternoon, Palmer will take on his former club Man City for the seventh time since leaving the Etihad almost three years ago. The England international is yet to beat his old employers as a Chelsea player - drawing three and losing three - and has scored just one goal in that time.
In a time where there is continued speculation around Palmer one day returning to Manchester, but to his boyhood club United, there have been a few questions over his commitment to Chelsea, though Rosenior has continuously disputed that.
Chelsea believe Palmer, who captained the Blues for the first time last weekend in the FA Cup win over Port Vale, remains fully committed to the club and will be an integral part of the long-term project. For Rosenior, one of his many tasks is trying to get the very best version of Palmer on the pitch between now and the end of the season.
The big question, though, is how one does that. Rosenior is keen to keep instilling confidence in the Chelsea attacker. "You give him confidence," said Rosenior when asked by football.london about injecting more belief into Palmer.
"You point out things he's doing well. You point out the things that are still very, very positive in his game. In terms of chance creation, I've gone through the stats. The chances he's created in our difficult times were very, very high for the league. We just didn't take the chances that he created. I showed him that.
"You can over-analyse at times, but that's not what I want Cole to do. Cole is an intuitive player. He needs to be free to express himself to the best of his ability.
"How we have tried to manage Cole before this period is there were question marks about why he was coming off, why he wasn't starting games. We wanted him fresh for this period, and so far he looks really, really good for that."
English (US) ·