THERE is one common reason linking the facts that Chelsea are in the title race and Manchester City are not. Cole Palmer.
City are an ageing squad in desperate need of a world-class youngster to give them freshness and spark.
That player should have been Cole Palmer.
Chelsea were a chaotic club in desperate need of an on-field leader to build a team around.
That player is Cole Palmer.
Pep Guardiola’s decision to allow Palmer to join Chelsea looked highly questionable even last season, when City were winning a fourth straight title and the young Mancunian he released was the stand-out player in a wildly inconsistent Blues team.
Now that Palmer is the stand-out player in an excellent Chelsea side, and now that City have suddenly imploded — winning just once in nine games — that chicken is well and truly roosting.
And yes, yes, the Rodri injury. But City’s extraordinary collapse is not all about the absence of their Ballon d’Or-winning midfield anchor.
Etihad chiefs are this week trumpeting the tenth anniversary of their City Football Academy, which has “developed 40 players for the men’s senior team and generated fees of up to £300million”.
City boast that “seven Premier League clubs and 12 Championship sides currently have a player from the CFA”.
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Which is all well and good, except that Palmer — one of two world-class players to come through the CFA, along with Phil Foden — is currently tearing it up for a team higher in the table than City.
And for an initial fee of £40m, which now looks an absolute steal.
These mistakes happen in football. It’s just that they usually happen to Chelsea and certainly not to Guardiola.
Look around at Chelsea’s main rivals and you’ll find Kevin De Bruyne, flogged by Chelsea aged 22, who has been Manchester City’s best player for years.
And you’ll find Mo Salah, shipped out by Chelsea aged 23, who has been Liverpool’s best player for years.
You’ll also find Declan Rice, rejected by Chelsea aged 14, who is now the £105million midfield heartbeat of Arsenal.
When Jose Mourinho was Chelsea boss he didn’t think De Bruyne or Salah were useless. Just not good enough for his first team at that point and certainly not future Footballers of the Year.
It’s the same with City and Palmer — who got my vote as Footballer of the Year above City’s Foden, who won the award because most voters seemed to think it was more impressive to be a great player in a great team than be a great player in a bad team.
Guardiola rated Palmer so highly that, while other promising City youngsters were loaned out, he was jealously guarded by the Etihad boss, drip-fed first-team football and asked to remain patient at City, just as Foden was.
Yet by the summer of last year, Palmer was 21 and ready to be a major Premier League footballer.
Guardiola had promised him substantially more football and all looked well last August when Palmer netted a stunning goal at Wembley in the Community Shield against Arsenal and scored again in the European Super Cup against Sevilla.
But the following week, City spent £55.5m on Jeremy Doku — who, while not a like-for-like player to Palmer, was another attacking player, the same age as Palmer, who City rated with a higher transfer value.
This arrival surprised Palmer and his advisers, and was the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to the player deciding he wanted to leave.
Guardiola didn’t want him to go but didn’t want to keep a player against his will when he knew his first-team chances would remain limited at City last season.
Also, the Doku transfer meant City needed to balance the books to comply with those ever-pesky Premier League Profit and Sustainability Rules.
Doku is a decent player — a bums-off-seats winger who may improve significantly but, at present, lacks end product and is often a substitute.
He is certainly not in the same class as Palmer, whose two penalties and one glorious assist helped Chelsea close on leaders Liverpool with a statement comeback victory at Spurs on Sunday.
After that 4-3 win at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca — who had worked with Palmer as a coach in City’s academy — was glowing about his talisman.
Especially interesting was Maresca’s admission that Palmer, who has scored 12 spot-kicks out of 12 in the Premier League, doesn’t practise penalties.
The idea of not practising penalties is remarkable in the modern age.
England didn’t practise penalties and they kept losing shootouts.
Under Gareth Southgate, they practised and studied them pretty much to PhD level and started winning shootouts.
But according to Maresca, Palmer is “not normal”. He is “not like us”.
Normal players practise and get better. Even very good players practise and get better.
The absolute best — the innate, blessed, ice-cool, off-the-cuff geniuses — are different.
The strange thing is that Guardiola — an undoubted genius himself — didn’t realise he had an actual genius in his squad.
For Manchester City, and for Chelsea, that is the difference.
MANY highly successful businessmen have gone into football and ballsed it up – but Sir Jim Ratcliffe is taking this trend to new limits.
Sir Jim, literally the most successful businessman in England, has gone into Manchester United, England’s biggest football club, and, within a year, has made the biggest imaginable pig’s ear of it.
This summer’s decision to hand Erik ten Hag a new contract and a huge say in transfer policy, only to sack him nine games into the season, was embarrassing enough.
But now the exit of Dan Ashworth – the world-class sporting director poached from filthy-rich Newcastle United in a supposedly almighty coup – just five months into his role, is truly excruciating.
Ashworth had an excellent track record of appointing managers – Gareth Southgate at England, Graham Potter at Brighton and Eddie Howe at Newcastle.
Yet Ratcliffe apparently ignored Ashworth’s advice when appointing Ruben Amorim.
Perhaps, Amorim will be a hit, perhaps not.
But Ratcliffe’s blunders over Ten Hag and Ashworth have cost United around £25million.
The multi-billionaire Ineos chief is currently trying to claw back some of his own immense wastage by charging children £66 to watch United and by sacking swathes of hard-working club staff.
And that there is capitalism in motion, baby.
THIS summer, Bournemouth sold their star man, Dominic Solanke. Brentford flogged their goal machine, Ivan Toney. And Fulham cashed in on their best player, Joao Palhinha.
Yet all three clubs – probably the three ‘smallest’ in the Premier League – have improved and sit in the top half of the table, looking down on several bigger, wealthier sides.
Immense credit should go to managers Andoni Iraola, Thomas Frank and Marco Silva.
FOOTBALL clubs don’t actually need expensive PR gurus.
Win matches and people in the media will generally write and say positive things. Lose matches, and people in the media will generally write and say negative things.
Yet Chelsea are apparently hiring a blue-chip spin doctor, Nerissa Chesterfield, who was director of communications in Rishi Sunak’s Downing Street regime. Which went well.
Perhaps she can help to ship out all those unwanted members of Chelsea’s ‘bomb squad’. To Rwanda, maybe?
LET’S not be snobbish about Arsenal’s reliance on set-piece goals.
If it was good enough for Stoke City, it should be good enough for the footballing chatterati of Stoke Newington.
