Cole Palmer

Vester said:
It sure hurts seeing a local academy product absolutely thriving at PL level in another club. Especially a week when we ourselves looked to be completely out of ideas in attack.
I didnt think it made any sense to sell him at the time and it makes even less sense these days.

Our club has managed more than fine without him and yeah, he wouldn't have the same minutes or output if he was still around. But anyone convincing themselves the club is better off by selling Palmer and buying Doku instead (for more money) is delusional. The whole "he wanted to leave, nothing we could do" narrative completely ignores why he wanted to leave and what we could have done different. He clearly had the ability to contribute at top level but wasn't given the chance. Not to mention Palmer himself said he wanted a loan but the club for some unknown reason said that wasn't an option. McAtee on the other hand we happily agreed to loan out when he wanted first team minutes, the difference probably (I'm guessing) being that we thought we had an opportunity to cash in "big" on Palmer but at the time not on McAtee. We as a club clearly does more things than not right, but lets not pretend we made a huge mistake on this one. Luckily it doesnt happen that often.
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The McAtee situation is bizarre. Pep praised him to high heaven in pre-season and was adamant the club wanted to keep him, yet he hasn't had a sniff.

Our academy record is still very sketchy, for me.
 
Blue and true said:
The McAtee situation is bizarre. Pep praised him to high heaven in pre-season and was adamant the club wanted to keep him, yet he hasn't had a sniff.

Our academy record is still very sketchy, for me.
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I guess maybe the club is just afraid of repeating Palmer's mistake again, so they just kept McAtee in the squad. I personally hope McAtee will do well, but if he doesn't then it's going to be another mistake unfortunately.
 
Blue and true said:
The McAtee situation is bizarre. Pep praised him to high heaven in pre-season and was adamant the club wanted to keep him, yet he hasn't had a sniff.

Our academy record is still very sketchy, for me.
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It's quite successful in financial terms but most of the academy graduates who are good enough to stay in our first team usually do. Perhaps Pep couldn't convince Cole staying was his best option.
 
Blue and true said:
The McAtee situation is bizarre. Pep praised him to high heaven in pre-season and was adamant the club wanted to keep him, yet he hasn't had a sniff.

Our academy record is still very sketchy, for me.
Click to expand...
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have expected to play too much in the league unless we were three clear. However, that policy will certainly change if he can show enough in the CL matches and may have to change anyway. There’s only so long we can continue with 14 outfield players before we’re sacrificing not only the domestic cups but also our hopes in the Champions League.
 
This idea that signing Doku and/or Nunes forced him out the door needs to die.

We signed Doku for 2 reasons. Firstly, Mahrez had left, leaving us very short out wide with Bernardo needed more in the middle after Gundo's departure (and KDB's fitness).

Secondly, we needed someone who could play on the left as our only two options were Grealish and Foden, who we wanted to move inside. Palmer was tried out there and really struggled.

We signed Nunes as another midfield body after Palmer had already made his mind up to leave. Had Chelsea not come in for him, he was probably going to go to somewhere like Brighton or West Ham with a buy-back clause.

Palmer didn't want to stay and fight for a regular place - despite finally breaking through with goals in the Community Shield and Super Cup, he wanted to go. There's some confusion here, because Pep, City and Palmer keep changing their stories about who wanted what - there's a suggestion that he wanted to go on loan and City said no - which would be a little bizarre.

We were relaxed about it because we had Bobb in his position anyway.

With hindsight, we should have kept him. But it was pretty hard to see him performing like this.
 
Glad to see him doing very well. I can see him wasn't going to get enough of game time even if he stayed with us. The best position for him to achieve his potential is always that number 10 role, which I think the club would never give that to him. Still, seeing him instantly popped off in a new team, got 27 goals 15 assists, doubled his market value to 80m is absolutely insane. What a player.
 
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one:

He doesn't fit a Pep system!

Pep tried for years and couldn't get it working. So maybe Pep is right.. after all what would you have?

6 PL's and a European Cup or a star player?
 
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