The Cracks Beneath Palmer's Crown

Palmer’s touch skews the ball slightly to his weaker right, and Branthwaite senses his chance. He gets close to Palmer in half-a-second, but Palmer has already taken two touches by the time he gets there. His first puts the ball back on his left, his second nutmegs Branthwaite.

Everton’s pivots desperately scramble to stop Chelsea’s skeleton key. Garner and Onana both converge from either side to squeeze the space. Palmer simply back-flicks the ball around Onana to Jackson, receives the 1-2 and from the edge of the box, effortlessly caresses the ball past Pickford’s outstretched glove, into the far corner.

That was the first of Palmer’s incredible four goals that evening against Everton, which included a perfect first-half hat-trick in an astonishing 29 minutes. The goal that sealed the treble summed up Palmer at his imperious best - telegraphing Pickford’s pass to Onana, intercepting it and then lobbing Everton’s keeper from 30 yards with his weaker right.

That was also Palmer’s 2nd successive hattrick at the Bridge. The one 10 days before was even better - wrecking Man United with two goals after the 99th minute to seal an unforgettable 4-3 win. His 4th hat-tricks against Wolves made him the Chelsea player with the most PL hattricks; one more than Frank Lampard and Didier Drogba.

The 23-year-old’s immunity to pressure and nonchalant brilliance had many Chelsea fans believing that the garden of Eden was slowly turning into Palmer’s playground. It did not matter that he started at right wing vs United and at 10 vs Everton; nor was it of consequence that he had Mudryk on the left wing and Madueke on the right. In the 4-4 vs City, he stood in the pouring rain against the club he had called home for 13 years, and dispatched a penalty with ruthless disdain.

It is equally outrageous to have to come to terms with the fact that Palmer has managed three open-play goals in his last 36 PL games. In the last 16 games of last season, he managed a solitary goal (a penalty against Liverpool) and two assists. The signs of decline were evident in the run in to last season, but two assists in the UECL final against Betis and a stellar goal and two more assists vs PSG in the Club World Cup final may have plastered over some very significant cracks.

Palmer’s pubalgia issues, which put him out for nearly a quarter of a year this season, are at the centre of his alarming dip. “We see this even more frequently in younger players making the transition into first-team football,” Geoff Scott, former Head of Medicine and Sports Science at Tottenham Hotspur, told The Athletic. “The sudden jump in training intensity, match tempo, and high-speed running can create dramatic changes in load that the groin simply isn’t conditioned for yet.”

Palmer joined Chelsea after playing 1,408 minutes in 39 senior games (in all competitions) across three seasons for City. In his two-and-a-half seasons for Chelsea he has played a staggering 110 games for club and country.

Palmer first sustained the groin injury while warming up for the game against West Ham in August 2025. “Whatever modality you treat it with, a tendon is going to take six to eight weeks to fully heal,” former Manchester United physiotherapist David Binningsley told The Athletic, who added that players can return from smaller tendon injuries after four or five weeks. Palmer returned in three. In his first start vs United, he aggravated the injury and was forced off after 21 minutes. The repercussions of that decision are still being felt in every game six months later.

This season, Palmer’s chance creation (key passes per90) has almost halved, from a superb 2.6 last season to a measly 1.3. Over the last two seasons, he was creating a big chance every two games; this season he has managed one in every five. It feels unfathomable that a player who notched 11 assists in 33 PL games in his first season & eight in 36 in his second has just 1 in his 20 this season.

That reservoir of limitless confidence evaporating has manifested in other ways too. That 6-0 win vs Everton was the last league game in which Palmer scored a goal with his right foot. The 3-0 defeat to the same opposition in his last PL game marked 63 games without a weak-foot finish. His shots have dropped below 3 per 90 minutes for the first time in his Chelsea career.

Chelsea fans have, quite frighteningly, seen this story before. Mason Mount may not have been as prodigiously talented as Palmer but the former Cobham graduate excelled in his first season under Frank Lampard and broke out under Tuchel with 29 G/A in all competitions, crowned with a Champions League final assist.

With Chelsea winning the CL and qualifying for the Club World Cup, Mount went on to play nearly 200 games for club and country in just 3 seasons before being plagued by a persistent pubalgia issue. A player universally praised for his intensity and availability went on to miss 58 games in his first three seasons at United, compared to just three in his first three at Chelsea despite playing nearly 100 fewer games for the Reds.

Is that an ominous sign for Chelsea’s talisman? His national team manager Thomas Tuchel offered some reprieve. “I saw him live against Arsenal,” he said before the friendly against Uruguay, “and for the first time in a long time, I had the feeling his stride was back to the original lengths. Before, I felt he was not free and the stride was not long enough, the acceleration was not there and the movement was not free.”

Palmer glittered in a cameo against the Uruguayans, coming on for Phil Foden just before the hour mark and providing the assist from a corner for Ben White’s opener. “Honestly, he has to show it,” said Tuchel, “because we have more evidence without him than with him so the pressure is on him.”

That pressure will only amplify with each of the seven league games remaining before the World Cup. Jude Bellingham, Phil Foden, James Garner are all competing for the 8/10 slots, while the in-form Jarrod Bowen and Bukayo Saka will offer significant threat to cementing his place at RW. His close friend Morgan Rogers is currently above him in the pecking order in both roles. With the exception of Garner, all of them have featured for Tuchel more than he has.

How well his ice-cold veins function under suffocating pressure these next few months will decide if Palmer starts this World Cup in the XI or on the bench. Three of those games will come against the league’s current top five; anything resembling his imperious best against City, Newcastle, United and Liverpool could turn a harsh winter into a fruitful summer.

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