They had other good players. That's why. One who scored 50+ goals in a season. Another couple who have both been PL player of the year (one of them multiple times). Not to mention people like Silva and, at points, Gundogan, who are also beasts. I'm not sure what the confusion is about.
Cole Palmer | Chelsea Player
- Thread starter tentan
- Start date
The confusion is because they fecked up. Obviously.
After giving away Salah and De Bruyne for peanuts, Chelsea were owed one.
De Bryune ?
Salah?
Gundogan left before Palmer left and it was known for months. City signed Doku when they had Palmer. They allowed Sterling, Mahrez and Gundogan to basically leave the club and Palmer was there. Grealish had reached his ceiling.
Pretending that people finding the decision “confusing” is a red herring.
Selling him was a monumentally stupid decision that genuinely did not need to be made at that time with the players city had, the players that had left and those they subsequently bought. Just call it what it is.
Selling him was monumentally stupid because of how good he was. It made perfect sense from a personnel/role/skillset perspective - they really didn't need him - they missed the fact he was so good they should have built around him for the future
Chelsea would probably be 13th looking like a bunch of clowns if they didn’t buy him.
It turned out the best Chelsea transfer since ages imo. We gotta do these kind of deals more often. Hopefully Chido Obi will have a similar impact though he'll take more time. Are there any good youngsters at Chelsea, City or PSG academy that we could get in for cheap?
His goal contribution rate is crazy. Like Salah and Haaland you have to ignore the underperformance at times just because of how good it is.
Why is it obvious? Because City are struggling this season and if Palmer was there, they'd be top of the table by 10 points? City's main problem this season has been their propensity to ship goals, and I don't think Palmer would help with that.
They sold him and then won the league again for the fourth straight year, which has never happened in the history of English top flight football. I'm sure they'll recover this season and probably finish above Chelsea. Unless they get docked points, of course.....
The cult of Barcelona really is a powerful force indeed. It’s clear to most of the rest of us fans that City definitely dropped a clanger by letting Palmer go.
But here we have Barca fans defending Pep to the hilt because the genius of the almighty cannot be questioned.
Ex Barca legend or not he is fallible. Letting Palmer go proves that he’s not the messiah he’s a very very naughty boy.
But here we have Barca fans defending Pep to the hilt because the genius of the almighty cannot be questioned.
Ex Barca legend or not he is fallible. Letting Palmer go proves that he’s not the messiah he’s a very very naughty boy.
No. It was just as obvious last season that they seriously fecked up.
I would like Maresca to experiment a little with the front line and move Palmer back out to RW and try Felix or Nkunku in the 10 and see how we get on. He took the league by storm last season playing on the right. Our attack has stagnated a bit the last 10-12 games or so.
Much more akin to the former than the latter.
He can do other things than score.
He's the best player in the league for me.
Last season when they won the league after receiving £46 million for him?
Ex Barca legend or not he is fallible. Letting Palmer go proves that he’s not the messiah he’s a very very naughty boy.
Eh, all the greats have 1-2 slips. We let Pogba go for free and bought him back for how much again? Mourinho let De Bruyne and Salah go. I'm sure the list goes on.
Because he'd currently be their best player and even last season would have been their second best player. Because they had a ready-made KDB successor coming up through the academy and let him go, and now will need to spend serious money this coming summer to sign a player who might not even be as good
Absolutely.
Agree to disagree for now (even if I think in retrospect Pep should have simply loaned him out). Foden, a City youth graduate, won POTY a season in which Palmer, another City youth graduate, was sold to Chelsea for a healthy fee. That's not a failure outside of the Internet
I can't be arsed yet to dig up posts from back then but at the time of his departure to Chelsea no one was marking him as the next KDB. Even now he is not close to KDB at Wolfsburg talk less of KDB at City. As @WeePat has noted his statistics are masking a drop in performance which is curiously coinciding with a drop in form for Chelsea.
Top player obviously, in case anyone is confused. Just a bit of Monday morning football managing
Yeah, De Bruyne was a comet, it's not like there's a lot of young guys like that out there. Of the ones closest, the only one City could conceivably get now is Wirtz. Losing Palmer was a massive feck up, no matter how you slice it. "No one was marking his as the next De Bruyne" is actual proof of it, considering how good he was immediately for Chelsea(and how well his role and skillset would have fit City as a long term KDB successor)
Just because it's City and it might not matter in the end doesn't change that
Ah c'mon it's a pretty obvious clanger outside of the internet as well and I'm sure even Pep would admit that in hindsight. As you've said even the greats make mistakes. Didn't Fergie famously regret moving Stam on for example?
I doubt you'll find a single City fan who isn't gutted that he's gone.
It's fair to say that not many saw in him the heights he's hit this season and last but then that's not our job as fans at the end of the day (especially when he's not even getting any games).
True!
We agree that City would act differently if they could reverse back to the beginning of last season. And I also think there was no point in buying Doku when Palmer was ready (they're making the same mistake not playing McAtee).
His breakout season was very impressive. Crazy how a player can develop so quickly and so far in such a short time
Well, he'd currently be their best player because all their attacking talents are underperfroming, but it's seriously debatable as to whether he would be if they were all playing well.
A ready made KDB successor? I'd say that Palmer has a long way to go to prove that he's of that ilk. Prime KDB was a serious proposition.
Money on a player that might not be as good? Probably need to sort themselves out defensively and in midfield first, as I said. Moreover, there is no guarantee that Palmer can perform similarly in Pep's system as a regular starter. He wouldn't be given the same kind of free rein.
No, Doku is an entirely different profile and his signing made sense then and now. The problem is his quality, not the profile
Tbf, what was Palmer contract situation like? If he was in the final year and not extending, that's a whole different story
Ah man what I'd give for a guy like him to be one of our #10s. Amad's fine and all but lacks that bit of explosiveness. Really really need better attackers.
Not so sure with this line of thinking.The cult of Barcelona really is a powerful force indeed. It’s clear to most of the rest of us fans that City definitely dropped a clanger by letting Palmer go.
But here we have Barca fans defending Pep to the hilt because the genius of the almighty cannot be questioned.
Ex Barca legend or not he is fallible. Letting Palmer go proves that he’s not the messiah he’s a very very naughty boy.
Think Palmer is too much of a free spirit to play in a Guardiola side. Would be strangled like Grealish.
Maresca deserves a lot of credit for giving him the freedom to express himself. Palmer is miles better off at Chelsea from a footballing perspective.
Smart move from his perspective
Last edited:
He already outperformed all of their attacking players last season. That's why this was a feck up. He was ready to be a huge player for them when they sold him
Now that I'm arsed I went back to read the first 5 pages of this thread and yeah, although if given the chance to rectify, City would absolutely not sell him to Chelsea, you can understand the logic to some extent
So he had 3 years left on his contract
Colossal feck up
Colossal feck up
all i’ll say is everyone at chelsea thought rolf “chopper” harris was great at one stage.
You don't have a player like that without knowing they are absolute quality. I assume they just couldn't guarantee him minutes with the rest of the players and they were happy to get a good fee for him despite his obvious quality.
In defense of Pep, to give some context and in a strict football sense, at the moment he let Cole go, the kid was a bit too much of a sellfish player and risk taker in his approach (seems he'll always be that way for the good and bad), in comparison to the more obedient, yet at the same time talented and incisive but more team oriented player Pep maybe thougth Foden would finally become consistently for him.
He might also thougth Kevin would still there to be his wild card like Palmer and he certainly forgot the sort of stamina/ joker card/ number providers players like Ryan, Julian, young Gundo were for him in the past, to not properly cover those assets in his team.
Cole BTW never looked easy to handle or patient, more when he knows that he has that edge to produce numbers and his confidence (for the good and bad) it's his best trait.
What I find more odd than him loosing Palmer, is his excessive trust on Doku and some other new acquisitions that clearly aren't also in the mold of what he usually asks for his main players. These players, no matter how problematic Cole might be to handle and some tendencies he might have that do not commute entirely with Pep Ball at that moment, never looked for them as promising as Palmer looked and with even a more sellfish approach in the case of Doku with almost no end product. So I dunno what happened behind the curtains, but City's post trebble renovation so far sucked
He might also thougth Kevin would still there to be his wild card like Palmer and he certainly forgot the sort of stamina/ joker card/ number providers players like Ryan, Julian, young Gundo were for him in the past, to not properly cover those assets in his team.
Cole BTW never looked easy to handle or patient, more when he knows that he has that edge to produce numbers and his confidence (for the good and bad) it's his best trait.
What I find more odd than him loosing Palmer, is his excessive trust on Doku and some other new acquisitions that clearly aren't also in the mold of what he usually asks for his main players. These players, no matter how problematic Cole might be to handle and some tendencies he might have that do not commute entirely with Pep Ball at that moment, never looked for them as promising as Palmer looked and with even a more sellfish approach in the case of Doku with almost no end product. So I dunno what happened behind the curtains, but City's post trebble renovation so far sucked
He’s like an early era Bruno Fernandes if you reduced the crazy stamina but gave him a lot more dribbling ability and pace.
Just let him do whatever he needs in the no.10 area and he’ll guarantee you G/As.
there’s no defending a coked up drugs cheat or the disgusting teams he has managed.
Steal of the century selling Mount for 55 mil and getting this lad for 40
Last season Foden was the PFA and FWA player of the year and Haaland scored 38 goals in 45 matches. So, no.
Yeah and Rodri wasn't even nominated for those awards. That alone tells how reliable those voters are
As to Haaland, no. He scored lots of goals against crap teams in easy games, but on the whole was hugely disappointing throughout the season
I'm not sure how anyone can classify Chelsea selling Salah as a "mistake."
Nobody in the world at the same saw the Liverpool Salah in the Chelsea one, he was very average for Chelsea.
It would be like if Man Utd sold Scott McTominay and he came became, 2 years later as one of the best midfielders in World football. Wouldn't be a mistake because not a single person would have seen that coming.
Nobody in the world at the same saw the Liverpool Salah in the Chelsea one, he was very average for Chelsea.
It would be like if Man Utd sold Scott McTominay and he came became, 2 years later as one of the best midfielders in World football. Wouldn't be a mistake because not a single person would have seen that coming.
Palmer is too much of a free spirit for Peps rigid system. Great player to watch but not sure about how he'd have the discipline for the way Pep wants players to be in positions at certain times.
Bigger question is how UTD missed him.