Chelsea 1-0 Leicester (Cucurella 60′)
STAMFORD BRIDGE — Cole Palmer looked up to see his number on the board, then didn’t look up again. As Wesley Fofana thanked the fans, Palmer inspected every blade of grass in his path as if they possessed hypnotic powers, as if they might therapeutically wipe the 73 minutes of quasi-football activity he had just endured.
He half-hugged Enzo Fernandez, more out of duty than love, and thanked his coaches, before trudging down the tunnel and out of sight. That was quite enough.
Chelsea had taken a lead they were not going to lose, more because Leicester City were offensively impotent than any sense of defensive solidity and security. After an hour of misplaced passes and attacks thwarted by simply stopping and turning around without good reason, Marc Cucurella lashed a shot past Mads Hermansen from 25 yards.
Enzo Maresca‘s side resort to long shots with increasing regularity of late – it’s how Reece James opened the scoring against Copenhagen last Thursday, and Tosin Adarabioyo and Joao Felix broke down Morecambe in the FA Cup fifth round. Here’s both a reminder of the individual quality available and their inability to consistently cohere it into a functioning attack capable of breaking down low blocks. This is not a long-term solution.
Cucurella’s low strike relieved some scrutiny on Palmer’s first senior missed penalty having scored 12, the longest perfect record in Premier League history. Hermansen saved well to his left, but there was an inevitability to Palmer’s nonchalance looking like half-heartedness when it went wrong.
Having missed, he bit his lip and trotted off to take the resulting corner. Within a minute, he dropped towards the halfway line to float an enticing ball into Christopher Nkunku, who didn’t quite appreciate the enormity of the opportunity.
This was Palmer’s afternoon in microcosm, not at his best but equally let down by teammates. Within the first 10 minutes, he could have earned a penalty, deflected one shot past Hermansen and curled another into the upper tier of the away end. He was trying too hard and not thinking straight, lacking the confidence to manipulate time with his usual deftness.
Maresca said post-match the 22-year-old had been ill for two days, and that playing only demonstrates his unwavering commitment. This is reasonable, but it will only gall Palmer more to watch his teammates play such directionless football. Pedro Neto, nominally a striker on Sunday, did not have a shot all game.
Between the starts of December and February, Palmer created more chances than any player in Europe’s top five leagues, none of which were converted. He has also created 19 big chances in the Premier League, joint-second among all players after Mohamed Salah, which have led to just six league assists.
Last season, this would have been a Palmer game, an exhibition of his airy ruthlessness, like beating opponents to death with candy floss. Across five matches against promoted clubs last season, he scored or assisted 11 of Chelsea’s 13 goals.
Of course they were dependent on his maverick genius, but he didn’t mind. He enjoyed the adoration and veneration, the whiplash transition from bit-part prodigy-in-waiting to burgeoning deity in a club desperate to find their next god. This was Palmer’s Chelsea, and increasingly his world. Jamie Carragher called him the best player in the Premier League. There were days he might have been right.
He was supposed to be immune to the sheer Chelsea-ness of it all, but has not scored or assisted for nine games. Much of the talk in 2024 was of a man capable of ignoring the weight of the world, but now it is gradually crushing and restricting him. He occasionally has the strained look of a single father to 10 kids who just won’t do what he says.
But ultimately he looks bored of holding Chelsea together with the sheer force of extraordinary talent, being double-marked most weeks because he is so unquestionably the most dangerous player. A man who depends on invention and inspiration looks burned out.
For Chelsea, the short-term effects of this are damaging, but the long-term repercussions could be catastrophic. Unless he is provided a cast of equals, or even functional peers, this could be the period the club looks back on as the trigger for a grand and destructive exit. Whatever Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali might hope, an eight-year contract won’t stop someone who really doesn’t want to be here.