sport news How Cole Palmer is similar to the late, great George Best... and here's why the ... trends now
Sometimes, amid the waves of data and analysis which seem to drown contemporary football, you wonder whether there is still space for the genuinely unexpected. The player who arrives out of a clear blue sky and delivers to a level no-one foresaw.
It was like that with George Best, called up to the Manchester United first team for a home match with West Bromwich Albion 61 years ago, and such a bag of nerves that Matt Busby listed him as ‘reserve’, to preserve him from stage fright, when scrawling out the team-sheet in ballpoint.
The then 17-year-old was convinced that this selection, in the days before substitutes were used, must be some kind of punishment. He made his debut, of course – and so invincibly that Busby later wondered aloud whether what he observed had been a dream. A manager never really knows until the white line is crossed and the first whistle blown.
No-one is comparing Cole Palmer with that vast talent but the surprise component is much the same. The player last week described by Pep Guardiola as ‘shy’ has provided this season’s supreme iridescence in ways which transcend the grey data.
Numbers tell us that Palmer’s 29 goal/assists are bettered by only Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins. That his delivery of a goal or assist every 75 minutes is best in the division. That he has been involved in 46 per cent of his side’s Premier League goals - more than any other player.
Cole Palmer has enjoyed a stunning debut season since moving to Chelsea last summer
The Man City academy graduate has shone despite being part of a struggling Chelsea side
His surprise ascent to immediate stardom is similar to that of the late, great George Best
But the individual moments soar above all that. The close control and 40-yard diagonal pass picking out Mykhailo Mudryk from the touchline at Villa Park last week. The forthright claiming of the ball to despatch his fourth goal against Everton from the spot, where he not missed in 13. The ball rolled through a forest of legs, into the net, at Old Trafford, delivered against the direction of his rapid travel into the box.
It would have been something to achieve all this as part of the galaxy of talents and vast self-belief at Manchester City, the club which decided to release him last summer, but to do it amid the drudgery which has followed Chelsea around for most of this season is something else.
Players in that wonderfully gifted City side are justifiably fancied to be crowned Player of the Year by the Football Writers’ Association and Professional Footballers Association next month. Phil Foden leads the PFA award odds, followed by Rodri. But Palmer, at the age of 21, is the one who has truly soared, set the football conversation alight, transcended every expectation. Those others can’t hold a torch to him.
There is none of the insecurity in Palmer which ultimately led Busby to seek help for Best, telling him he should ‘go and see somebody’ rather than intimidate him with the word ‘psychiatry.’ (Best was suspicious of the individual with dark-framed glasses who was peering at him and refused clinical help. ‘He looked at me in a funny way and then jotted something down…’ he later related.) Palmer’s vast self-confident manifests itself in the kind of attitude which is not exactly endearing to some who encounter him but, on the flip side, it breeds that focus and willingness to attempt the outrageous.
West Ham thought they had his signature wrapped up
