It was a transfer Gary Neville deemed “mad” when Chelsea paid £40m to convince Cole Palmer to swap the certain glories of Manchester City for a new era under Mauricio Pochettino.
At 21, Palmer already had a Premier League winners’ medal to go with an FA Cup, Champions League and Super Cup. There remained a sense, though, that he was unproven and had only ever played a cameo role at the Etihad.
The move to Stamford Bridge transformed him into a main character, earned him a first England call-up, and he is currently the Blues’ top scorer with 12 goals and 10 assists.
Even Palmer has been slightly taken aback by the impact he has made. “I have, I’m not going to lie,” he tells i.
“I just thought if I had the opportunity, I was doing it in training at City, I knew what I could do. But the Premier League’s a whole different game so I didn’t know what it would be like.”
A league campaign in which Chelsea have lost 10 of their 26 Premier League games so far was certainly not on anyone’s agenda. Pochettino has staunchly defended his players.
Last month, they were handed the unfortunate sobriquet – again by Neville – of “billion-pound bottlejobs” after the Carabao Cup final.
Jurgen Klopp was credited with winning the trophy with kids, but Pochettino was keen to point out that he had fielded a starting XI with an average age of 23. Five were 22 or under.
Palmer, who recently won Premier League Young Player of the Year at the London Football Awards, admits that has been “a little bit” overlooked amid fierce criticism this season. “But I feel like we’re good enough,” he adds.
“We’re young, but we’re good players. So once we gel, we’ll be alright. Try and get to another final in the FA Cup, push as high in the league as we can, and keep going game by game and getting the team to gel.”
The Pochettino project would not be so disparaged from the outside were it not for the £400m-plus spent last summer. Palmer’s £40m fee was a sizeable part of that, but he insists there was no added pressure on a City academy graduate who just wanted to play every week.
“I didn’t even think about the fee when I moved,” he says.
“I just thought, ‘everyone’s talking about the fee, but they’ve not even seen me play’. They’ve seen me play a few times but no one’s actually seen me play. So I didn’t really listen to it.
“I didn’t know how it was going to go when I came here but to get the opportunity to play every week, that’s why I came – for game time.”
In west London, Palmer has been handed unprecedented responsibility for such a young player – he is also their first-choice penalty taker – but he is “confident and comfortable” in that role.
Everything he has done so far has suggested he was right to make the wrenching decision to leave behind the trophies and the guidance of Pep Guardiola – though he concedes he had no assurances that he would be playing every week at Chelsea.
“It weren’t a guarantee, no manager can guarantee, ‘you’re going to play, you’re going to do this’, but I felt like if I went and did well, I would get the opportunity.
“At City, no one knows what it would have been like but I just thought how many amazing established players there were there.”
In a year, he has left Wythenshawe, moved to London, and established himself as the centre-piece of Chelsea’s attack.
On Wednesday, it is exactly 100 days until Euro 2024 and all the indications are that he will be on England’s plane. That is ultimately a testament to the power of players backing themselves. Palmer’s transfer may have raised eyebrows at the time but it has been every bit vindicated since.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/hu5CvAM
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