Of the 51 games Chelsea played last season, Cole Palmer appeared in 45 of them. He missed one with suspension, one with an almost laughable cold, but was otherwise undroppable.
Palmer was also a Manchester City player for four of those games. It leaves him having played in 45 of a possible 47 for Chelsea in just over 12 months. 40 were starts, 25 included goal contributions. Overall he ended with a staggering 25 goals and 15 assists. He managed two hat-tricks.
In the final of Euro 2024 it was Palmer who England turned to. He delivered. Mauricio Pochettino had to push his Chelsea players to prove that they weren’t Cole Palmer FC when the evidence mounting for just that was becoming insurmountable (not helped by the 5-0 loss that followed without him).
Before Palmer’s first start as a Chelsea player, on August 27, 2023, in a Carabao Cup tie against Brighton, he had a touch over 1,500 senior minutes to his name as a 21-year-old. That includes Community Shield games and the Super Cup. Most of it is made up from early-round domestic cup matches too.
So, not only is it still scarcely believable just how much of an impact he has made at Stamford Bridge in a tiny period of time, it does make the decision to leave him from the Conference League league phase squad more understandable. In the Premier League alone last season he played more minutes for Chelsea than he had in his entire senior City career, and this does matter.
On one hand, Chelsea without Palmer has hardly been Chelsea at all since last season, so the choice to go without perhaps Enzo Maresca’s most reliable player in a tournament the club are expected to win, and probably win comfortably, is bold.
It has been questioned whether it shows a lack of ambition to lift the Conference League next May. Just like playing a rotated team in cup matches, not picking Palmer to even be a backup can be deemed a show of arrogance from Chelsea.
However, with the amount Palmer has played such a relatively small amount of time, is it actually just hedging bets and going safe? Palmer hasn’t played much football comparatively for his age, so his body should reasonably be expected to hold up for six extra games against inferior opposition.
Maresca would not have to call on him for these games either, so the demands would likely be limited to three (albeit lengthy) trips across Europe, plus perhaps the odd substitute appearance if needed.
Chelsea could say that they would use Palmer as a safety net if things were to go wrong. Against Servette they were definitely in danger of doing so and he came on in both play-off ties. The absence from the final squad is put down to load management, because the flip side is Palmer has gone from playing almost no senior football to bearing the load of most of a club.
Having dealt so well with the demands and the step-up, Chelsea want to watch his levels carefully and ensure that nothing risky is carried out when it’s not deemed necessary. Because taking any sort of risk with Palmer – the same goes for Wesley Fofana and Romeo Lavia due to their injury problems, but to a lesser extent having not made the same splash as their teammate – is too much risk.
Why bother with Palmer in these games given how much Chelsa spent on new players, and attackers over the summer? If anything, the call to leave him out actually explains the choice to sign Jadon Sancho on deadline day, because otherwise he would be one of 11 players who could operate as a forward in the Chelsea XI.
What Maresca will be hoping, is that he gets the job done in the league phase with a deliberately weakened group, before adding Palmer back into the team next year for the knockout stages. There would be a possible transfer dilemma if Chelsea were to sign anyone as only three changes can be made in January, but Palmer would surely be one of those regardless.
The example of how to do this best is none other than Eden Hazard. During Chelsea’s successful 2018/19 Europa League campaign he only played 100 minutes during the group stage, starting one match. Hazard was in the Palmer-like sphere of being almost entirely relied upon by his teammates at that stage, but Maurizio Sarri still chose to heavily rotate.
Chelsea only won two of their group games by more than one goal as they struggled to hit top form without their best XI, but Hazard was rested and took full advantage during the league. Without the burden of midweek football for much of the first half of the season, Hazard scored 10 league goals and assisted nine before the turn of the year.
Even when it got to the knockouts he wasn’t relied on as much. Hazard was a substitute in the first round-of-32 leg and didn’t play any of the last-16 matches. He was left on the bench in the quarter-final first leg before then returning to the team for the home fixture one week later.
Sarri turned to Hazard when it was most important. In the knowledge that Chelsea were largely strong enough to win without their talisman, the Belgian was afforded time off. That Chelsea side were more established as a squad but also played in a competition at a higher level than Maresca and Palmer will be this season.
The blueprint has therefore been set, but it does not hold all the answers. Palmer may have worked on Hazard-standards of output and reliance last term but it is the 2012/13 Europa League campaign that is maybe more applicable.
Hazard and Chelsea were dumped into the second-tier European tournament and it left Hazard the chance to prove himself as a world star in blue. With a goal and two assists from four games (just two stars), he took control of that competition before going on to win it.
Palmer has already demonstrated how good he is but would have had the chance to make an impact continentally for the first time if he had been selected. To take that opportunity away from him is undoubtedly a blow, but Palmer will also back himself to be valuable when needed and have a much bigger part to play in more elite competitions than the Conference League too.
As is often the case with Chelsea, Hazard has been the guiding light to follow. This time, the club look to finally have someone able to hold a candle to his success and make the comparisons worthwhile.
