Considering he boasted a 100 per cent success rate from his 11 previous penalty kicks and is renowned for being completely unfazed in pressure situations, it was perhaps no surprise that Cole Palmer attempted a Panenka penalty in Chelsea’s 4-3 victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
That goal means Palmer now has the “best” 100 per cent penalty conversion rate in the Premier League era, with all 12 converted, including his first Panenka against Burnley in March. It also means he’s on 17 goal involvements this season — only Mohamed Salah has more (21). As Paul Merson pointed out in his post-match analysis on Sky Sports, Palmer’s performance level this season is perhaps more impressive than last season, because opponents now know about his quality, and he’s a marked man.
Yet despite being the obvious player for opponents to concentrate on, Palmer keeps providing decisive contributions. How does he do it?
For Chelsea’s first game of this season, a 2-0 defeat by Manchester City, Palmer started on the right. This wasn’t particularly successful — not only was Palmer’s contribution in an attacking sense minimal, City also seemed keen to exploit the space behind him. A 2-0 defeat against the champions was hardly disastrous in Enzo Maresca’s first game in charge, but it prompted a re-think before Chelsea’s next game, a trip to Wolves.
GO DEEPER
Chelsea are no longer ‘Cole Palmer FC’ – his marked-man status is forcing others to step up
For that game, Enzo Fernandez moved from the N0 10 position to a deeper role, Noni Madueke came into the side on the right, and Palmer was used centrally. This worked perfectly, with Palmer teeing up Madueke three times in the second half, only the fifth time the same player has assisted each goal for a Premier League hat-trick.
Since then, Palmer has always been used in that central No 10 — on paper, at least.
That’s the interesting thing about Palmer’s displays. Although used as a No 10, he’s barely ever played in the zones you expect, as the heat map below from his 15 Premier League appearances this season shows.
Only in one match, against Nottingham Forest, was he primarily positioned centrally, between the lines. More regularly, he plays in an inside-right position, akin to Martin Odegaard’s role for Arsenal. The displays against Liverpool and Aston Villa are particularly notable in that respect.
But often Palmer does something completely different. Note, for example, his positioning in the ninth game of the season against Newcastle, where he barely touched the ball on the right side of the pitch — which was the complete opposite of how he’d played against West Ham in the fifth game.
Another outlier came in the sixth game, when Palmer’s touch map is more what you would expect of a right-back, rather than a No 10. This was deliberate, against a Brighton side playing a high defensive line. Palmer repeatedly strolled across to the right touchline, received a forward pass from the defence, and then flipped the ball over the opposition first-time for runners to get in behind. It created this situation, with three Chelsea players through on goal:
And this situation, where Nicolas Jackson rounded the goalkeeper but couldn’t turn the ball in.
It was, of course, a pre-determined approach. “The manager had a gameplan,” Palmer told the BBC afterwards. “We knew how to attack them, with first-time passes, as their line was so high.” But the extraordinary thing about Palmer’s performance was that despite effectively playing as a right-back because he was primarily charged with creating chances for others, Palmer smashed in four goals before half-time. One was a penalty, and another was a free kick, but Palmer is capable of deciding games even when he’s playing a long way from the opposition goal.
That’s another interesting thing about Palmer’s game. In terms of combined goals and assists, Palmer is alongside Salah and Bukayo Saka in the top three. Usually, a key part of contributing in terms of goals and assists is receiving the ball in dangerous positions in the first place. Salah and Saka are also in the top three in the Premier League in terms of receiving Opta-defined progressive passes.
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Cole Palmer’s defensive diligence under Enzo Maresca deserves more acclaim
But Palmer, in stark contrast, doesn’t make the top 50 in the Premier League by that measure. In other words, Palmer is not a specialist at positioning himself to receive dangerous passes. He either comes short to receive simple passes and then plays outrageous balls for team-mates, like his sublime around-the-corner ball for Pedro Neto against Newcastle, which teed up Jackson for the opener, or he lets others receive the good forward passes and receives simpler passes higher up. When Chelsea do look to play forward passes to a player between the lines, it’s often to Jackson coming short, who then feeds Palmer. This goal against Newcastle was offside, but it showed their intentions.
Therefore, Palmer is the complete opposite of someone like Mason Mount, effectively his predecessor in this role for Chelsea. Mount was sometimes criticised for not being overly creative, nor expressive with his final ball. But in 2021-22, he was joint-sixth in the Premier League in terms of combined goals and assists. Mount’s secret was not the quality of his final ball, but the fact he was so adept at positioning himself to receive progressive passes — he was seventh in the league by that measure. Salah and Saka, incidentally, were the top two.
But Palmer isn’t that sort of player at all. Palmer is a No 10 on paper, but he spends most of his time coming very short, into zones where opponents aren’t inclined to follow, before playing killer passes from deep. On other occasions, he sprints into the channels to provide a goal threat, or he waits for others to collect forward passes, and then receives simple balls into feet. In a way, opponents are actually quite successful at stopping him receiving the ball between the lines — but that’s not enough to stop him from dominating games.
