One pundit has claimed that teams being able to stop Cole Palmer playing his game, then makes another key Blues player ineffective.
Palmer has been targeted and man-marked a lot in recent games this season after he flew on to the scene last season at Chelsea.
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Nobody knew what he was about, and we even had some Chelsea fans questioning his signing from Manchester City when he first arrived.
The whole thing about if he wasn’t good enough for Pep Guardiola then why is he good enough for Chelsea soon disappeared when he started playing for Chelsea and became our main talisman.
But what do you do to a clubs best player? You make sure you do all you can to stop them, and that is what teams are doing this season now they have all realised just how dangerous and important he is to Chelsea’s attacks and how many of our goals come through his creativity and top play.
Man-marking Palmer also effects Jackson
Something that perhaps not many of us think about, is that stopping the creativity of Palmer also stops the effectiveness of Nicolas Jackson, who’s pace and clever runs thrive of players finding him.
Perhaps with Enzo Fernandez not playing as much in the league recently as well, has contributed to this, because he is also a player who can find a through ball in this Chelsea side.
Former player turned pundit, Robbie Earle, raised a good point. As cited on X this week, he says:
“If you can squeeze and stop Cole Palmer, you take a big part of Nicolas Jackson’s game away, because Palmer can’t get on the turn and move to thread those balls. And you don’t see so much of Jackson making those vertical runs that are so dangerous.”
