Chelsea are growing this season, stretching up to the sky like a flower that has spent too long in the shadows. Enzo Maresca has much still to do before his project reaches its lofty goals, but the early signs are promising.
You can’t help but wonder where the club would be had Cole Palmer not been signed from Manchester City in a deal worth £40m plus add-ons last summer. It raised a few eyebrows at the time, but now, the imperious forward raises roofs by the dozen.
Cole Palmer's incredible rise
Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher pronounced Palmer as “the best player in the Premier League” last month, with the England international wreaking utter chaos in his homeland once again.
1.
Cole Palmer
34
33
2.
Erling Haaland
31
32
2.
Ollie Watkins
37
32
4.
Mohamed Salah
32
28
5.
Phil Foden
35
27
5.
Heung-min Son
35
27
Across 54 Chelsea appearances, the 22-year-old has scored 31 goals and supplied 20 assists, which is absolutely absurd when you consider that he had only been afforded a bit-part role as he cut his teeth with Manchester City.
Having dazzled in Blue last season, for a side that ebbed and flowed like a raging tide, Palmer has carried his quality into the current campaign, now plying his art alongside a better calibre of teammates, so far scoring six goals and assisting five more over just seven matches in the English top flight.
Palmer is one of the finest in the business, there’s no doubt about that. However, Chelsea could have manufactured their own homegrown version of the inevitable attacking machine, for they once let Michael Olise slip through their fingers.
Chelsea fumbled the bag with Michael Olise
Olise signed for Bayern Munich this summer in a deal worth only £50m – which is, obviously, not a small sum but still a figure that seems below the bracket that the former Crystal Palace star should fall into. Indeed, the Bavarian giants now deem him to be worth around £100m.
He’d been breathtaking at Selhurst Park, scoring at a prodigious rate despite injury problems last season, posting ten goals and six assists across only 14 Premier League starts, also averaging 1.9 key passes, 2.1 dribbles and 5.7 successful duels per game, as per Sofascore.
His influence had been so significant that talent scout Jacek Kulig hailed him as “one of the EPL’s best players”. Everyone wanted a piece, including Chelsea, who believed they were ahead in the race back in June, with Manchester City and Arsenal also circling like sharks.
However, it was, of course, Bayern who triumphed, and boy are they reaping the rewards, with the France international having scored six goals and added three assists across nine matches for Die Roten thus far.
Given that Olise spent seven years in Chelsea’s famed Cobham academy, there’s definitely a sense of frustration that he was not kept on the books and nurtured to the top, instead being released for nothing and spending a bit of time with Manchester City before starting his senior career with Reading.
One that got away
The transfers that nearly happened but never did. This article is part of Football FanCast's One That Got Away series.
Described as a “wizard” by writer Muhammad Butt, he could be every bit as good as Palmer for the west Londoners.
As per FBref, Olise ranks among the top 1% of attacking midfielders and wingers across Europe’s top five leagues over the past year for goals scored, the top 7% for assists, the top 12% for shot-creating actions and the top 10% for progressive carries per 90, leading the stats-based site to liken him to Chelsea’s phenomenon.
What could have been. Luckily, Chelsea have Palmer at their disposal, so probably aren’t rueing his loss all that much, for their superstar is leading them back toward glory.
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