Mauricio Pochettino spoke to Sky Sprots last night after his team’s win over Middlesbrough, and it was interesting to note what he said about Cole Palmer.
Palmer scored twice, and we all know what he can do in attack. But in this case Pochettino was more concerned with the efforts his midfielder had made defensively.
He noted that he loved what Palmer was doing without the ball. Not just the work rate to press, but also the “intuition” as he called it, to know when and how to do so.
That was especially important in a more central role tonight, and Palmer excelled.
You can see him speaking about his charge in the clip embedded here:
https://twitter.com/SkyFootball/status/1749918917982593392
We still expect Conor Gallagher to be back next game, but it’s good to know that Palmer can be trusted in this setup in the future when we’re playing teams likely to sit really deep and allow us the ball the majority of the time.
