Cole Palmer has Noni Madueke’s lingering left foot to thank for a piece of unwanted personal Chelsea history.
In the 54th minute at the King Power Stadium on Saturday, Nicolas Jackson raced into the Leicester City penalty area, opened his body and curled a low shot towards the far post. Mads Hermansen, at full stretch, sent his parry straight towards Palmer to leave a simple chance. It would have been a third Chelsea goal if Madueke had halted his run, tried to jump out of the way a fraction earlier or done basically anything else.
Instead, Palmer’s calm side-footed finish cannoned off the winger’s instep and out for a Leicester goal kick.
Both men greeted the moment with better humour than their head coach Enzo Maresca on the touchline, and Palmer’s instant grin in Madueke’s direction confirmed that he did not hold it against him. They are good friends who typically share great chemistry on the pitch and have combined for four Premier League goals this season, Palmer assisting Madueke each time.
But the freakish sequence did spurn Palmer’s best chance to avoid completing his third consecutive Premier League game without registering a goal or assist for Chelsea. To find the last time that happened you need to go back to his first four league appearances after joining from Manchester City — and the first three of those were substitute cameos.
First and foremost, Palmer’s mini-slump highlights the remarkably high standards of attacking production he has maintained since arriving at Stamford Bridge last year. For much of that time it has not felt unreasonable to describe Chelsea as “Cole Palmer FC”, citing the unfortunate words of Mauricio Pochettino before his team lost 5-0 at Arsenal without their talisman in April.
Pochettino coined the term as part of an unsuccessful public challenge to his players to prove they were not reliant on their best player. His successor Maresca is every bit as mindful of the need to diversify Chelsea’s attack. “If we expect 20 goals and 20 assists from him again, then that’s wrong,” the Italian said of Palmer in a press conference earlier this month.
“We shouldn’t put that pressure on him. He needs to enjoy his football and when he does that, you can see what he can do. Cole plays well even when he doesn’t score because he allows the rest (of the team) to play in the right way. He’s a very important player for us.”
Opponents are making it much harder for Palmer to enjoy his football these days; he is being fouled 2.5 times per 90 minutes in the Premier League according to fbref.com (the fifth-highest rate in the division among players with more than 900 minutes played), a huge jump from 0.9 in 2023-24. Last season there were only two games in which he was fouled three times or more — a bar that has been cleared in seven of Chelsea’s first 12 games of the new campaign.
It is partly a consequence of Maresca’s big tactical decision to move Palmer to what he calls the “pocket” from the right wing, focusing his influence on areas of the pitch that are more valuable, but more congested. Mainly, however, it is a reaction to his spectacular success; stopping Palmer has become the top priority for every opposing team, and designating a player to man-mark him is being established as the rule rather than the exception.
In short, Palmer is now getting the treatment reserved for Premier League superstars. Finding ways to make opponents pay for that is on him — and on Maresca too. “We use the weapon of the other team that if they want to man-mark Cole then we probably need to find another solution,” Chelsea’s head coach said last month.
“But also the next step forward for Cole is to get used to playing with that situation — he has to learn and you can see sometimes he gets frustrated because it is not easy being man-marked for 90 to 95 minutes, but all of the players at that level get used to being marked man-to-man.”
Maresca has deployed a variety of counter-strategies, with mixed results. At half-time against Bournemouth in September he reacted to Lewis Cook man-marking Palmer by re-orienting Chelsea’s attacks around Jadon Sancho on the left flank. In last month’s 2-1 win over Newcastle United he unexpectedly switched Palmer to the left pocket to get him away from Joelinton.
He moved Palmer back from the left to the right pocket at half-time against Manchester United at Old Trafford, replacing the struggling Malo Gusto with Marc Cucurella and switching the full-back required to push into attacking midfield. In the second half of the 1-1 draw with Arsenal he introduced Enzo Fernandez’s incisive passing to Chelsea’s midfield and instructed Pedro Neto to drive into the right pocket usually occupied by Palmer.
Last weekend he overwhelmed Leicester with what became for long stretches a 3-1-5-1 formation, positioning Fernandez and Joao Felix either side of Palmer in the creative line.
The correct answer will vary from game to game, depending on the nature of the opponent and the particular tools Maresca has at his disposal. A relatively toothless Leicester still produced just enough dangerous transition attacks to indicate that starting Palmer, Fernandez and Joao Felix together behind Jackson, with Cucurella pushing up to provide attacking width on the left flank, may not be viable defensively against better teams.
Gusto or Cucurella pushing infield ahead of Moises Caicedo and Romeo Lavia gives Chelsea a more solid alignment in the middle of the pitch, at the cost of making the team even more dependent on Palmer as a passer. Shifting him to the left pocket can force opponents to change their defensive plans but takes him further away from Madueke, limiting their opportunities to combine to devastating effect in the final third.
Fernandez has plenty of defensive shortcomings, but his ball progression helps Palmer and Chelsea, and his opportunistic headed goal against Leicester was merely the latest example of his smart instincts for arriving in the penalty area from a more advanced midfield position.
United and Arsenal succeeded in stifling Chelsea’s attacking threat by limiting Palmer. Maresca’s more attacking alignment at the King Power Stadium helped ensure Leicester could not do the same, with Joao Felix, Jackson and Fernandez all benefiting from the defensive attention the England international commanded.
Whatever the starting system or personnel, Chelsea learning how to consistently punish teams who over-commit to Palmer is a vital step in the long-term development of Maresca’s side. The more they have to worry about other threats in blue, the harder opponents will find it to deny Palmer the space (and he has repeatedly demonstrated he does not need much) in which he has lit up the Premier League for more than a year.
In the endless game of tactical cat and mouse that defines modern football at the highest level, that is how the very best teams keep winning — and how their best players continue to dominate.
(Top image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
