Chelsea star Cole Palmer must take one more step to reach superstar status and silence the haters

The perils of football discourse spare no one if your last game was a poor one. Cole Palmer is the latest king to be hooked back to pauper.

A return of six goals and five assists in eight Premier League appearances has not been enough to keep the wolves of scrutiny at bay any longer. How dare he go four matches for club and country without a goal!…

At 22, Palmer is only in his second season as a regular starter for a senior team. His remarkable rise from Manchester City squad player to Ballon d’Or nominee in such a short space of time has been one of the most enjoyable storylines to watch unfold.

This is not the end of his journey, however. There are still more twists and turns on Palmer’s ascendance to the pinnacle of football, to become the true face of the Premier League, and having to fight off doubters at this point is a ‘canon event’ for every superstar.

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  Real weakness exposed

  Palmer was on top of the world heading into the October internationals. Fresh in the memory was his four-goal haul against Brighton and he looked ready to snatch the crown as the Premier League’s best player.

  Here was a scoring sensation who could just as well dribble and pass, jink and drive. Here was a highlight machine who was of huge appeal to audiences of all ages, an iconic celebration to go with an iconic showreel.

  When footballers are at their best, it seems ludicrous to even rationalise their pitfalls. Former Chelsea favourite Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink had a hard time even coming up with a weakness in Palmer’s game, having to resort to an arbitrary attribute like ‘heading’. Sorry that he isn’t Didier Drogba!

  Under the cosh at Anfield and without much room for manoeuvre, the actual chink in Palmer’s armour became clearer. He was too easy to muscle out of the game, too easy to make redundant when the game got physical and there was a need to stand tall in those gritty duels.

  Many of Palmer’s positional peers – think Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham or Kevin De Bruyne – can survive and thrive in these kinds of battles because they also bring a spirited and gruelling intensity to the table. This could be a criticism of Chelsea’s squad building as they didn’t have another creator to take that burden away from Palmer, but too often from open play was he obsolete while hanging in the midfield hole.

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    ‘Far from world-class’

    Palmer’s memorable 12 months or so of being slap-bang in the centre of the limelight have been full of highs even besides his Chelsea exploits, becoming a pivotal player off the bench for England at Euro 2024 yet somehow failing to earn a starting spot. His goal in the final should’ve put to bed the internet’s idea he wasn’t good enough or ready yet.

    The negative noise around Palmer has not been isolated to the depths of social media, with ex-pros even starting to look at the glass of appreciation as if it were half-full.

    Speaking to Genting Casino, former Chelsea midfielder Emmanuel Petit said: “Palmer is a very good player but he’s not yet a top international player and that’s the level he needs to reach. He shows promising skills, maturity and personality but he’s done nothing yet if we’re honest and is far from world-class at the moment.”

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    Need for perspective or valid concerns?

    Technically, Palmer has already won the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and UEFA Super Cup in his career. But let’s be honest with ourselves, he only meaningfully contributed to the last of those four honours during his City days. That’s the whole reason why everyone balked at his £40 million price tag, which in hindsight looks like the bargain of the century.

    Petit, and the other faceless critics with more nefarious intentions, are right in that Palmer still has more to prove at the highest level. Chelsea were benefitted domestically last season by the lack of a European campaign, and their No.20 won’t appear in continental action until 2025 at the earliest having been left off their squad list for the Conference League’s league stage.

    It also wouldn’t hurt for Palmer to delve further into a second full season of Blues action putting up insane numbers to properly tell his haters to shove it, right?

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    Tweaks required

    Palmer, obviously, is not solely to blame. Football is a team game after all, and Chelsea can’t just expect their marquee attraction to bail them out at every opportunity.

    The Blues’ project built around youth means Palmer has immediately been thrust into a position where he must lead by the seniority of his fame, rather than settle for a lesser role more expected of a 22-year-old.

    Upon Enzo Maresca’s arrival at Stamford Bridge this summer, the concern over Palmer, though only minor, was how he would fit into his preferred 4-3-3 and whether his absence of standout physicality would hinder him. The Italian has, to his credit, quickly sought to make the England international core to his plans in a free role – the next step is to make the requisite tweaks for Chelsea to absorb his quieter games and perhaps empower some of their other attackers.

    The Chelsea of BlueCo are not perpetually in win-now mode like they were under Roman Abramovich. They can take their time and plan accordingly to find that balance, all the while protecting Palmer from the outside world.

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    Rite of passage

    And yet despite everything that’s been laid out, despite all of the noise and all of the naysaying, this is good for Palmer. No success story is without that doom-and-gloom chapter set against a backdrop of rainy pathetic fallacy. It’s a staple of the modern athletic tale and he needs to embrace rebuttal.

    If a megastar is not under an incessant spotlight, then they simply haven’t been exposed to the glare for long enough. In this case, Palmer has earned his spurs as someone who people are willing to get on the back of – what do you mean he didn’t score four goals in one half of football again?!?!

    Palmer, who is only behind Erling Haaland for Premier League goal contributions since the start of 2023-24 for crying out loud, has hit so many of the major checkpoints needed to reach the top. This cycle of cynicism will eventually clear and bring forth brighter days again. These warnings are not alarmist, but complimentary.