How Cole Palmer is similar to the late, great George Best… and here’s why the Chelsea star should beat Phil Foden to the Footballer of the Year award

Sometimes, amid the waves of data and analysis which seem to drown contemporary football, you wonder whether there is still space for the genuinely unexpected. The player who arrives out of a clear blue sky and delivers to a level no-one foresaw.

It was like that with George Best, called up to the Manchester United first team for a home match with West Bromwich Albion 61 years ago, and such a bag of nerves that Matt Busby listed him as ‘reserve’, to preserve him from stage fright, when scrawling out the team-sheet in ballpoint. 

The then 17-year-old was convinced that this selection, in the days before substitutes were used, must be some kind of punishment. He made his debut, of course – and so invincibly that Busby later wondered aloud whether what he observed had been a dream. A manager never really knows until the white line is crossed and the first whistle blown.

No-one is comparing Cole Palmer with that vast talent but the surprise component is much the same. The player last week described by Pep Guardiola as ‘shy’ has provided this season’s supreme iridescence in ways which transcend the grey data. 

Numbers tell us that Palmer’s 29 goal/assists are bettered by only Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins. That his delivery of a goal or assist every 75 minutes is best in the division. That he has been involved in 46 per cent of his side’s Premier League goals – more than any other player.

Cole Palmer has enjoyed a stunning debut season since moving to Chelsea last summer

The Man City academy graduate has shone despite being part of a struggling Chelsea side

His surprise ascent to immediate stardom is similar to that of the late, great George Best

But the individual moments soar above all that. The close control and 40-yard diagonal pass picking out Mykhailo Mudryk from the touchline at Villa Park last week. The forthright claiming of the ball to despatch his fourth goal against Everton from the spot, where he not missed in 13. The ball rolled through a forest of legs, into the net, at Old Trafford, delivered against the direction of his rapid travel into the box.

It would have been something to achieve all this as part of the galaxy of talents and vast self-belief at Manchester City, the club which decided to release him last summer, but to do it amid the drudgery which has followed Chelsea around for most of this season is something else. 

Players in that wonderfully gifted City side are justifiably fancied to be crowned Player of the Year by the Football Writers’ Association and Professional Footballers Association next month. Phil Foden leads the PFA award odds, followed by Rodri. But Palmer, at the age of 21, is the one who has truly soared, set the football conversation alight, transcended every expectation. Those others can’t hold a torch to him.

There is none of the insecurity in Palmer which ultimately led Busby to seek help for Best, telling him he should ‘go and see somebody’ rather than intimidate him with the word ‘psychiatry.’ (Best was suspicious of the individual with dark-framed glasses who was peering at him and refused clinical help. ‘He looked at me in a funny way and then jotted something down…’ he later related.) Palmer’s vast self-confident manifests itself in the kind of attitude which is not exactly endearing to some who encounter him but, on the flip side, it breeds that focus and willingness to attempt the outrageous.

West Ham thought they had his signature wrapped up and Chelsea only moved for him after a deal for Crystal Palace’s Michael Olise fell through. Yet something significant was said after Chelsea’s evisceration by Arsenal, with Palmer absent, last week, when Mauricio Pochettino was confronted with his own demand that the young player’s teammates should be too proud to allow the team to become ‘Cole Palmer Football Club.’ The manager admitted: ‘He is the only player we have. A playmaker who links all the lines in the team.’ An extraordinary assessment. Nooner foresaw this.

Palmer’s former boss Pep Guardiola described him as ‘shy’, but he is extremely self confident

Palmer has truly soared and transcended every expectation set upon him over this season

It is why he deserves to edge out the likes of Phil Foden for the PFA Player of the Year award

While Mohamed Salah was busy trashing the way he will be remembered by Liverpool last weekend, Palmer was noisily involving himself a less self-absorbed kind of dispute with Chelsea’s coaching staff. He had taken issue with the refereeing decision which had cost Chelsea a late winner and no-one, including assistant coach Jesus Perez was going to get in his way.

‘Off the pitch, I’m just quiet,’ he told Mail Sport’s Adrian Kajumba earlier this year. ‘Keep myself to myself. But when I go on the pitch, I change. The switch just flicks. I don’t know why.’ Only three players – Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale and Andy Gray – have been simultaneously named the PFA’s Player and Young Player of the Year. Palmer has comfortably earned a place in that company.

England fans should be careful what they wish for 

Fabio Capello didn’t see how ridiculous he looked when he arrived by prior appointment to speak to a group of us at the Laureus awards in Madrid last week.

Unfathomably, he took umbrage before a word was spoken and made to leave, was persuaded back, decided to leave again, and when a colleague said ‘leave, then’, decided to stay.

He proceeded to trash Jordan Pickford and question England’s defence, having already expounded on England’s national football characteristic of ‘freezing’ in big tournaments, implying its players are temperamentally weak. 

Incredible to recall, looking back now, that this was the £6million-a-year manager universally believed to be England’s saviour before the ultimately disastrous 2010 World Cup. 

Those who have no time for Gareth Southgate are equally certain that some sophisticated new supercoach will rescue England from the football which has taken them to a Euros final and World Cup semi-final. Be careful what you wish for.

Fabio Capello was on strange form when speaking at the Laureus awards in Madrid last week

Premier League’s reach knows no bounds 

I’ve spent five days walking a section of the Camino de Compostela in northern Spain, searching for quiet, calm and perhaps the meaning of life. The first two certainly materialised. 

It was beginning to seem like a million miles from football’s sound and fury when I walked through a Galician hamlet in the middle of nowhere and saw this. The Premier League is truly everywhere.

I saw this tribute to City star Rodri when walking through a Galician hamlet in northern Spain

Klopp’s Salah clash puts him in hallowed company

Jurgen Klopp’s touchline dispute with Mohamed Salah puts him in hallowed company. 

Bob Paisley, the most successful Liverpool manager of them all, even incurred the wrath of the Kop for substituting the popular, mercurial and unhappy midfielder Craig Johnston in the 69th minute of a home game against Sunderland in March 1982, a few months before announcing he was stepping down. 

Jurgen Klopp’s touchline clash with Mohamed Salah last week puts him in hallowed company

Paisley was unmoved – an arch-competitor to the very last, who felt that he saw things that the Kop did not see. He had guided the team to three European Cups and a fifth league title was imminent that March but he had no time for sentiment.

Neither does Klopp. Therein lies the real significance about last Saturday.