Enzo Maresca has revealed what lengths Cole Palmer went through to feature in Chelsea’s win over Leicester
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Enzo Maresca has revealed that Cole Palmer played through illness during Chelsea’s win over Leicester, as he backed his struggling star to bounce back from his penalty miss.
Palmer went into Sunday’s game on the back of an eight-game goal drought across competitions, his longest such run in a Chelsea shirt.
That extended to nine matches at Stamford Bridge, with the Englishman blowing a golden opportunity to return to the scoresheet when seeing an early penalty saved. After 17 successful conversions, it was the first miss of Palmer’s senior career.
The 22-year-old was eventually replaced by academy graduate Tyrique George with around 20 minutes to play, with Chelsea going on to claim all three points courtesy of Marc Cucurella’s long-range strike.
“Cole, yesterday didn’t train because he didn’t feel well and during the night he didn’t feel well,” Maresca said.
“This morning, he woke up and said to me: ‘I want to be on the pitch because I want to help this club and this team play Champions League’.
“In the last two days, he was completely out with fever and diarrhoea. In the last 48 hours he didn’t train and was very bad, with a fever and this bad feeling.
“But this morning, he asked to play the game and this shows how the players want to bring this club where it belongs.”
Cole Palmer saw his penalty saved by Mads Hermansen
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Despite Palmer’s lean run, Chelsea have now climbed back into the Premier League’s top four on the strength of successive home wins over Leicester and Southampton.
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With a more challenging fixture list ahead, starting with next weekend’s away trip to Arsenal, though, Maresca insists he is confident his talisman will soon be back to his best.
“The Leicester keeper is brilliant and Cole is going to score more penalties and miss more,” he added. “The people need to understand the effort he made to be there. Cole is a top player. Everything is normal now.”