Cole Palmer

[Tolmie scores]

Presently they are.

All I'm saying is that I disagree with the whole "imagine how good he'd be with better players around him" thing. Football doesn't work like that.

When you're the best player on your team, everything runs through you and it's flattering.

Cole Palmer is a very, very good player but let's get it right; he's thriving in a lower pressure environment, where he's less worried about making mistakes. He wouldn't be putting up these numbers for us because we wouldn't depend on him the way they currently do.

It's not a dig at either Cole or Chelsea but look at the two squads. That's the reality.

Fair arguement but i don't necessarily agree with you as I think Palmer has a rare ability to create out of nothing so probably doesnt matter what type of defensive system he faces as he can produce when tightly marked, as seen this year. He probably didn't have the patience to learn how to use that skill under Pep. After all, Pep encouraged Mahrez to be clever and creative on the ball in the right circumstances and he even seems to encourage Phil to try things centrally which really shows trust. Takes time to earn Pep's trust, you can't be a Bowles or Kinkladze type ( do your own thing) maybe Palmer thought thats a lot of graft for limited fun..who knows. Shame we wont bear the fruits of 11 years of quality youth development though.

 

[Tolmie scores]

That’s a very good, clear and unbiased opinion. I was told by a Preston lad on my team who has played lower league professionally much of it in Germany, coaches at a school football academy here and also coaches us, just the other day, that watching City is boring, I had to explain about the ten man defences we’ve faced for years and the fact that when a lot of teams go toe to toe they can get very good results against us but surely if such a knowledgeable lad swallowed the medias bullshit then we’ve no chance with the majority of numpties.
Cole had nowhere near the freedom he has in your games which is maybe a large part of his frustration at City?

I agree with this. Maybe he thought the games to be enjoyed afterall. I can nutmeg players centrally. I have the skill. Probably Pep would go nuts if he tried that here.. lose it centrally when half your team are ahead of you would send Pep ballistic! Probably thought..nah thats not for me..which is fair enough. David Silva tried a few clever riskier things centrally for us..seemed to work out well.. Pep probably thought ..not having that but then gave as a pass to David as he was a magician!

 

[SebastianBlue]

:)

Glad I could bring a smile to your face, however fleeting. ;-)

 

[jamielowndes]

Presently they are.

All I'm saying is that I disagree with the whole "imagine how good he'd be with better players around him" thing. Football doesn't work like that.

When you're the best player on your team, everything runs through you and it's flattering.

Cole Palmer is a very, very good player but let's get it right; he's thriving in a lower pressure environment, where he's less worried about making mistakes. He wouldn't be putting up these numbers for us because we wouldn't depend on him the way they currently do.

It's not a dig at either Cole or Chelsea but look at the two squads. That's the reality.

Couldn't agree more.

Someone argued with me recently saying "imagine what he'd do in a side like City".

We saw him. We know what it looks like.

Personally I'm really happy for him because he was never going to reach these numbers at City. But as you said, he's in a much lower pressure setting.

For one, he hasn't played a single UCL game this year and he won't next year either.

 

[chedinho]

Fair arguement but i don't necessarily agree with you as I think Palmer has a rare ability to create out of nothing so probably doesnt matter what type of defensive system he faces as he can produce when tightly marked, as seen this year. He probably didn't have the patience to learn how to use that skill under Pep. After all, Pep encouraged Mahrez to be clever and creative on the ball in the right circumstances and he even seems to encourage Phil to try things centrally which really shows trust. Takes time to earn Pep's trust, you can't be a Bowles or Kinkladze type ( do your own thing) maybe Palmer thought thats a lot of graft for limited fun..who knows. Shame we wont bear the fruits of 11 years of quality youth development though.

He does seem to be a kinkadze type player in Chelsea’s set up. Although a more structured counter attacking set up.
And pochetino is probably the best manager he could have for this moment in time for that.

I think Palmer is similar to Foden.
Can't play centrally. Foden was always attack minded. Still is, but is gradually seeing that there’s a risk with every forward pass. So it has to be calculated.
Foden is starting to understand. Our early season form was down to Alvarez and Foden trying to force

I don’t think Palmer wanted to wait like Foden did.

Basically two different styles of play. And one takes longer to learn than the other.

 

[Tolmie scores]

At this level? Probably near that, yes.

Again, conversion rates have been increasing over the past few seasons, and many put that down to a combination of players simply getting better at taking penalties and the rules continually being modified to increasingly favour the penalty taker.

Will it stay at 90% to finish the season or next season? Who knows.

But it is likely to be around 80% or higher, which means there isn’t a massive difference in outcomes between being “great” vs “good” at taking penalties.

Like I said, he has scored almost half of his goals because Chelsea get a lot of penalties (3x as many as we do when you normalise for possession in the opposition box).

It’s great that he is great at taking penalties, but people are making it out to be some transcendent skill, which it isn’t at this level.

If any player dropped below 75% conversion they would no longer be taking the penalties, so in actuality it’s also partly success bias: he has been successful in converting a chance that at minimum every player should put away 3/4ths of the time, and “good” penalty takers should put away 9/10ths of the time, so he is going to get more very high probability chances to score in the future (off penalties he often hasn’t won himself).

As opposed to someone like Watkins, who has 19 non-penalty goals, or even Foden who has 14 non-penalty goals, because neither of them are their team’s primary penalty takers so their average xG is much lower, but they are still banging them in.

If you get more high probability chances to score you are likely to score more goals.

Unless, of course, you are Darwin Nunez.

At the end of the day if he scored a goal like his nut meg, audacious 1-2 and well placed curler in bottom corner for us we'd be more than happy..fair play to him. Hope he continues playing so well, except for this weekend of course!!

 

[SebastianBlue]

At the end of the day if he scored a goal like his nut meg, audacious 1-2 and well placed curler in bottom corner for us we'd be more than happy..fair play to him. Hope he continues playing so well, except for this weekend of course!!

I know I would have loved it. It’s just unlikely he would have been in that position to do that if he had stayed with us, so it is was the right decision to go to Chelsea where he has the freedom to play as he wants, without the need to be sound on both sides of the game, allowing him to play a lot of minutes, and get a lot of high probability chances to score.

 

[halfcenturyup]

I know I would have loved it. It’s just unlikely he would have been in that position to do that if he had stayed with us, so it is was the right decision to go to Chelsea where he has the freedom to play as he wants, with the need to be sound on both sides of the game, allowing him to play a lot of minutes, and get a lot of high probability chances to score.

:D

 

[lasereyes]

Not sure Palmer could have helped us with those! ;-)

According to Sky and rest of the media, he is Superman so he can reverse the earth's spin and grab the ball off of Aguero/Mahrez ...

 

[Skybluezoo]

All you only Penalty merchants better pray