Cole Palmer has long since revealed himself to be really quite good at football. But the Chelsea maverick is a superstar with the ‘Wag’ SEO treatment now.
Palm readingCole Palmer has officially completed his ascent to football superstar celebrity. We know this because of three separate articles on The Sun website:
* One which discusses his ‘Wag’ (they’re not married as far as we and most importantly The Sun website know) on Instagram.
* Another which talks about his ‘off-field earnings’ and net worth.
* And one more SEO-optimised story which asks: ‘Who is Cole Palmer’s girlfriend Connie Grace and how long has she been dating the Chelsea midfielder?’, while literally and proudly failing to answer the second of those questions – ‘When Cole and Connie first hooked up hasn’t been reported’ – and using weird phrases like ‘off the field he’s not doing so badly either’.
He also isn’t a midfielder but the point stands: Palmer is now a headline-worthy click goldmine in his own right.
And that unfortunately means silly things have to be written about him sometimes, like Oliver Holt describing him in the Daily Mail as ‘the closest thing we have to Messi in the English game’.
Can’t he just be Cole Palmer? Is it really necessary to draw any correlation at all between a brilliant player not even halfway through his second full season at senior level and perhaps the greatest footballer who has ever lived?
And Palmer didn’t want to leave because he ‘has the courage and the will to exist outside the machine’. He didn’t want to leave at all and has stated as such numerous times, including as recently as last month when he told GQ: “I wasn’t even going to go. I got persuaded.”
He left in pursuit of more playing opportunities. It was that simple. And Guardiola did not sanction the sale because ‘he just realised he could not bend Palmer to his will’. Manchester City received an offer of £42.5m for a 21-year-old with 13 professional career starts and quite understandably felt it impossible to reject. At the time pretty much no-one figured they were the fools rather than Chelsea in that scenario.
But Dave Kidd in The Sun believes ‘THERE is one common reason linking the facts that Chelsea are in the title race and Manchester City are not. Cole Palmer.’
Palmer is certainly one of the key reasons Chelsea are in the title race, but not sure that really holds up for Manchester City. They sold him last summer and still became champions for a start.
Hmm. What is slightly different about Manchester City this season in comparison to last? The absence of Rodri? Wider injury issues? Poor transfers over a sustained period leading to an overreliance on older players whose form has collectively deteriorated?
Nah, just Palmer, init?
It should probably be noted that Manchester City have only scored two fewer goals than league-leading Liverpool while conceding ten more. Is that really down to their ‘desperate need of a world-class youngster to give them freshness and spark’? Or again, it not more easily explained by a lack of Rodri?
Kidd does acknowledge that in all fairness. ‘And yes, yes, the Rodri injury,’ he writes. ‘But City’s extraordinary collapse is not all about the absence of their Ballon d’Or-winning midfield anchor.’
It’s *definitely* more about that than them deciding to sell a peripheral youth player who might not have kicked on in the same way at Manchester City for massive money 18 months ago, though.
Still, at least Kidd doesn’t call him a midfielder or talk about his ‘Wag’.
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Grave digger
‘Ryan Gravenberch aims fresh dig at Jurgen Klopp as he discusses Liverpool revival’ is a curious Daily Mirror website headline, implying as it does that this is the latest in a long line of Gravenberch ‘digs’ at Klopp which Mediawatch might well simply have just completely missed.
But by the standard of this particular ‘dig’, it might be suggested that in truth, this is just manufactured nonsense.
The ‘dig’, in full:
“Now I play a lot of games as a starter, so it’s a little bit different. The coach gave me confidence when I needed it and I’m happy that I can show myself again
“Just the run of games, you really need it to be honest. Sometimes it’s really hard. For example, if you’re on the bench and the next game you play good, the next game you’re on the bench, then you come in for 10 minutes, then the 10 minutes are not really going how you want it.
“Then the next game you’re on the bench again, so that’s difficult. So yeah, just the run of games – that gives you the confidence if you’re doing good on the pitch.
“I’m happy that I’m playing. To be on the pitch again for 90 minutes and I can show off myself.”
There is some inevitable disappointment at being in and out of the team, sure, but also Gravenberch was a new player in a new league with new teammates and some injury issues to work through.
Plus that bit in the pre-match Girona press conference where Gravenberch described his first Liverpool season as “not that frustrating” because “my aim was to play a lot more minutes than I had before” at Bayern Munich feels pertinent. And not even vaguely a ‘dig’.
My GironaOver at the Liverpool Echo, we get this:
‘What happened at airport speaks volumes about Liverpool as European impact on title race made clear’
It is rare that said volumes are spoken as early as the opening paragraph but that might well be a reaction of just how quiet these volumes are:
‘Hours before the Liverpool team landed at Girona-Costa Brava airport on Monday afternoon, locals were already lining the temporary barriers placed inside the terminal. Clearly, the Reds remain a major draw in Europe.’
This just in: Liverpool are a big club with quite a lot of fans around the world.
In a world full of people, you can lose sight of it all‘Louis van Gaal shows true colours with touching tribute to iconic Man Utd figure’
It really is an appalling headline template, especially so in this case, but the Daily Mirror website are rinsing it for all it’s worth.