Cole Palmer needs next step in rapid Chelsea rise to combat Manchester United plan

There have been about as many stones to throw at Cole Palmer’s contributions since joining Chelsea as there are ice cream vans on Venus. And so, it feels like scraping the bottom of a particularly pebble-less barrel to say this next bit, but here goes anyway.

Chelsea’s two most difficult games of the Premier League season so far have also been Palmer’s quietest. On the opening day, he had little impact against former side Manchester City, still then playing off the right wing in a Chelsea side yet to take full shape.

Then - and perhaps more relevantly ahead of Sunday’s trip to Manchester United - having hit his straps, he was shut down by Liverpool in the 2-1 defeat away at Anfield a fortnight ago.

To stress, before we go any further and the keyboard arsenals begin to unload: this is explicitly not a suggestion that Palmer is a flat-track bully, nor the kind of player who goes missing in the biggest games.

In eight league matches against ‘big six’ rivals last season, he scored seven times, including a match-winning hat-trick against United at Stamford Bridge. (Chelsea played Liverpool on the opening day of the season, before Palmer signed, and on the one occasion when he actually was missing, through illness against Arsenal, they got stuffed 5-0). There was also the small matter of scoring England’s goal in the Euro 2024 final a few months ago.

Rather it is a compliment, highlighting the fact that while every team Chelsea face this season will now have a Palmer containment theory, so far it is only City and Liverpool who have managed to make it work while also taking something from the game themselves.

Speaking ahead of the United fixture, Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca described coming to terms with man-marking as the “next step” in Palmer’s rapid development.

“Last season, for him, was the first season in terms of arriving at Chelsea, and probably it was the opposite - [opponents] weren't too worried about marking Cole,” he said. “This year, they are now worried because of last year, so now he has to get used to it. It is going to be difficult, but he can do it.”

In every other league game this season bar the away fixture at Bournemouth, which Chelsea won anyway, Palmer has registered at least one goal or assist and we cannot be foolish enough to think that the managers of those opponents did not spend just as much, if not more, time in the build-up plotting to stifle the country’s most in-form footballer.

Everyone sets out to stop their opponents’ biggest threats; only the best teams manage to do it. United, of course, are far from one of those, having started the weekend in 14th place, already six points worse off than Chelsea in a top-four race they appear unlikely to be in.

But Erik ten Hag’s sacking and the imminent arrival of Ruben Amorim has changed the complexion of Sunday’s fixture, with Maresca himself admitting that Chelsea will now face a more motivated set of players under interim boss Ruud van Nistelrooy.

They will also play at an enthused Old Trafford, having struggled with the intensity of Newcastle’s press and atmosphere at St James’ Park in midweek. The absence of Palmer, able to shift momentum with a swivel under pressure or a pass through the lines, was keenly felt.

Van Nistelrooy named a defensive midfield pair of Casemiro and Manuel Ugarte for his side’s Carabao Cup win over Leicester, and with Christian Eriksen a doubt, may well stick with that balance with Palmer in mind.

As much as the emphasis is on the 22-year-old to find ways to escape increasingly close attention, Maresca knows he, too, has responsibility for finding novel ways to give his best player room to work. It is why he swapped his full-backs in the league win at home to Newcastle last Sunday, and pushed Palmer into the left-sided pocket, rather than his trademark right.

"The reason he was playing on the other side against Newcastle was because Joelinton would have been marking him man to man,” Maresca explained. “We tried to move him and give him some different options and space.”

Van Nistelrooy, a former Malaga team-mate of Maresca’s, may be only a stop-gap in the Old Trafford dugout, but knows you offer Palmer that at your peril.