The Blues’ ruthless ace has the ability to tear apart defences and England’s attack should be built around him.
Well, that was crazy. Cole Palmer, a man smarter, quicker, with better spatial and angular awareness than any other player on the pitch, moving lightly through thin air, would grab the headlines on an afternoon that was fascinating anyway.
It helped that Brighton were upbeat and fun but also incredibly fragile, like sparkly tights trying to play football. It was 4:2 with a goal left but ultimately it could have been another.
Palmer was also brilliantly ruthless, further evidence that there is no more effective or entertaining number 10 in the Premier League. Gareth Southgate favoured Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham and Bukayo Saka in the summer, all of whom were considerable talents, but it’s hard to imagine the England team couldn’t rely on Palmer’s talents to shape the game at hand.
Again the numbers looked absurd. A hat-trick in 10 minutes. Four goals in 20 minutes. Six goals and four assists in his last five league games. This is what Palmer has become used to, a game of just getting on a roll and dominating whoever is in front of him.
One reason is that this is rare: there are very few singular, truly unpredictable creative talents in the modern elite game. Palmer is as close to that as you can get, a player who goes anywhere, plays on the fly, invents the day before.
Against a heavily coached system team, giving him the ball as often as possible is a logical and difficult tactic. The element of surprise is very unsettling. When pushed out of his comfort zone by a free, imaginative, unplanned move, Palmer has the ability to tear apart a defense.
It certainly helps when the opposing coach decides to harpoon his own foot, but this is basically what Fabian Hurzeler did with the stupidest high defensive line ever, in perhaps the stupidest game ever played. Hurzeler is clearly an ideologue, with a set way of playing, even if that set way is destined to become an act of self-immolation.
The moment Chelsea worked this out midway through the first half Brighton were toast, the game dissolving into an experiment into how many times Nicolas Jackson could beat Dunk in a straight footrace from the halfway line (answer: many, many times).
What followed was a truly bizarre 10 minutes, with the same action repeated over and over again. In the 19th minute, Palmer hit the post on a quick counter-attack after a breakthrough down the middle. A moment later, the same thing happened again, Palmer scoring but it was ruled offside.
Two minutes later, he actually scored a goal after a terrible back-pass from Webster. Two minutes later, Jadon Sancho scored from the same through pass, but Noni Madueke was ruled out for offside. In the 27th minute, Chelsea were awarded a penalty when Sancho was brought down on another quick diagonal counterattack, and Palmer (of course) smashed the ball into the corner.
Finally, in the 29th minute, Pervis Estupinani was booked after collecting another counter attack from the halfway line. Palmer expertly smashed the free kick into the top corner. His fourth shot came in the 41st minute, this time into vast space on the left.
It was a surreal interlude, a period in which obvious tactical errors marred all good achievements in other areas. Georginio Rutter headed in a poorly defended Chelsea shot to put Brighton ahead.
Brighton’s second goal was scored by Carlos Bareva. He’s only 20 and has a really good all-round midfield talent (you know who could use a player like that? Hurry up. Let’s sell some of the wall behind the stand).
Until the final whistle, this crucial period of chaos seemed to demonstrate the spontaneous nature of these two football projects and their respective places on the development curve. If Hürzeler has learned a hard lesson, there is no doubt that Chelsea will be calmer and, if whispered, somewhat wiser.
Palmer, Madueke, Sancho and Jackson form a balanced and highly active front four. Yes, the starting eleven cost £520 million, even with the addition of Levi Colwill and Sancho for free. But there is something about Palmer that Chelsea finds irreplaceable. Not only is he an extremely talented player at his best, but he’s also a player whose style makes him an ideal fit for a team currently learning to play their own way.