Is Cole Palmer playing BADLY?

 

SHORT ANSWER:  NO

LONG ANSWER:  NO - but he has ceased to be appealing as an FPL asset; however, this is mainly down to the crash in Chelsea's form since early December, rather than because he hasn't been playing well.

Yes, the Golden Boy has hit a bit of a scoring drought over the last few months; but that happens to all players from time to time. And it's worth reminding ourselves that he's not a striker; we just grew used to him scoring goals at a striker's rate over last season and the early part of this one! He's not producing regular assists at the moment, either, because the entire Chelsea team has collapsed into dysfunctionality: Maresca-ball just isn't working - and that's not Palmer's fault.

I've been able to watch the entirety of Chelsea's last few games; and I've been looking at Palmer closely.

And he still takes my breath away. 

His alertness and awareness are just on another level. It's become a bit of a cliché in recent years to speak of particularly intelligent players having 'a head-on-a-swivel' - but Palmer really does: if you watch him closely in a game, you notice that he is glancing around him constantly - not just every few seconds, but just about every single second, checking the changing situation around him from moment to moment. This is a very hard thing to count (sometimes this glancing around is just a quick motion of the eyes rather than a plainly visible turn of the neck or the upper body), but I'd guess that Palmer is maybe scanning at least twice as often as just about any other player.

This leads to an uncanny degree of spatial awareness. Most players, if they're really switched on, will try to make sure that they always have an open passing lane from or to at least one of their teammates, even if they're not likely to receive the ball; Palmer almost invariably has at least two or three passing channels available! Not only that, but his 'rest defence' posture is impeccable too: he's almost always not only putting himself in space where he can be easily found by a Chelsea teammate, but at the same time putting himself more or less on a line between two opponents (so that his 'cover shadow' would make it difficult for them to pass to each other, if their team should suddenly regain possession of the ball). Often, indeed, he somehow manages to be blocking two potential opposition passing lanes at the same time, as well as being in good space to receive. And he is almost constantly in motion, seemingly unthinkingly taking a subtle step or two one way or another to always optimise his positioning. Really, I think in the Premier League at the moment only Martin Odegaard comes close to this level of acuity in his positioning; and he's not that close.

He's incredibly alert and quick-to-respond as well. When a defender miscontrols a ball, he's often off like a bullet-from-a-gun to pile pressure on the guy; when the ball is played into the box, Palmer is almost always one of the first men following up to try to get on the end of it; when a shot rebounds or is fumbled in the six-yard box, Palmer seems to be invariably the quickest to react on either team.

Now, I think it is possible that Palmer's performance might have dipped ever so slightly - perhaps even in some of these areas I just mentioned: maybe his rate-of-scanning or speed-of-response has fallen off, almost imperceptibly, by just a few percent.... but enough to occasionally have a small impact on his returns. I think it's also very likely that he is suffering some physical and mental fatigue, from having had to play almost every game in the League (and having to bear the responsibility of being both principal playmaker and principal goalscorer in a severely under-performing team); and, given that he gets lumps kicked out of him in every game, he's probably been carrying one or two little niggling injuries from time to time as well.

And it would be surprising if even his apparently ironclad self-confidence hadn't taken a bit of a dent from Chelsea's woeful run of form over the last few months, if he weren't starting to feel a bit demoralised by how badly things have been going; and that might - sometimes - take a little bit of an edge off his previously uncanny finishing.

But Cole Palmer has not been playing poorly over the past four months or so; he's still been Chelsea's best player, the only member of the side who regularly looks like he can create a threat. He hasn't suddenly become a bad player: he's the best creative midfield player in the Premier League, and one of the best in the world.

The amount of disparagement of Palmer we've been seeing online recently is quite unwarranted. And it is, sadly, an example of one of the great vices among the FPL community: people don't like to take responsibility for their Fantasy performance - they always want to blame their players.

This combines with other unlovely traits of humankind: a suspicion or resentment of exceptional talent (a refusal to believe that someone can be as good as Palmer is...), particularly in comparison to other 'favourite' players (partisans of Arsenal or City or United are always trying to contrive arguments that Palmer is 'not as good' as Saka or Foden or Fernandes... a fatuous debate, since they all have different strengths and weaknesses, different styles of play; but the fact that these players are commonly discussed together surely demonstrates that they are all similarly exceptional...).

Palmer's had a very disappointing run of FPL returns since the end of last year. But he's never been outside the top 3 or 4 FPL players for the year (and is still miles ahead of Saka, Foden, Fernandes, etc....), and will surely finish the season with well over 200 points. Moreover, I think he's been exceptionally unlucky (Chelsea have had so many good penalty shouts turned down this season; and Palmer has hit the post, or demanded a great stop from the opposing keeper, in just about every single game); and I would still bet on him picking up at least one or two more decent hauls this season.

He is not a bad player; he has not been playing badly.  People who make such accusations are deeply bitter and biased, and ignorant of football.