Cole Palmer was a relative unknown this time a year ago – now he’s not only Chelsea’s star player, he’s one of the faces of the Premier League.
He started his Chelsea career with games in the cup trying to earn first team chances – that’s now flipped to the extent that we don’t really expect to see much of him in the cup. He will be kept rested in those games – and hasn’t even been included in our Conference League squad for the initial stages.
The desire to keep him healthy is obvious – but it hasn’t worked out thus far. He limped off against Servette in the first leg of our playoff against them, and while he’s played in the games since, he withdrew from England duty this week to increase fears – but the well connected Matt Law went on the London is Blue podcast today to allay fears by saying the attacker is just tired:
“Cole Palmer, I’m confident he’s okay. He has muscle fatigue but they are being sensible with him. Unless he picked something up between time, I think he’s okay.”
You can see Law speak about Palmer in the clip embedded here:
Keeping Palmer in top shape
We’re glad to hear it’s just fatigue, and we’re also glad to hear that Palmer’s condition is clearly being taken very seriously this season. He’s the player that the whole attacking operation is going to be built around, and we want him fresh and firing in the league. There are no shortage of talented players to fill in for him in the other competitions we’re taking part in this year.
Whether it’s new management team or the new medical team, rotation and load management seems a serious priority now, and that can only help our prospects later in the season.