The Cole Palmer Project - Full Documentary (2024)

The man himself, Cole Palmer. The best English player so far this season for me. Cole Palmer coming into a club in total and utter disarray for a team that has no real identity and then he puts in performances like that. Chelsea have a penalty. Cole Palmer is about to become the joint Premier League top scorer with early Marlon this season. You look at Cole Palmer and the impact that he has made at Chelsea. The biggest quality he's got is his temperament. Do you know I'll go so far now as saying he has to start for England. He's Chelsea's best player already. Is this the biggest mistake that Pep Guardiola has made in transfers ever? In the seemingly endless abyss of Chelsea's 2023-24 campaign, a young man from Withenshaw has appeared as its lone beacon, guiding a group of overpriced players away from the aimless vision of a premature project and replacing it with a profound path of his own. The City of Manchester. A football mecca whose history is tribally split by the agents of time and colour, with red representing the magic of Manchester United during the 20th century and blue symbolising the symphonic crescendo of Manchester City in the 21st. The former noisy neighbours now reside at the peak of the Premier League penthouse, an ascent made possible by the guidance of Pep Guardiola, the vision of club executives and the investment into one of the game's most impressive football academies, which is where we first find Manchester native Cole Palmer. The lanky teenager was a mere wisp of a boy amidst the giants of the Etihad, yet even then the lad would leave behind bright crumbs of brilliance en route to lifting the FA Youth Cup and Premier League 2 trophy as the youth's side's standout player. His confidence and composure in front of the net revealed a natural finishing ability that impressed the gaffer who had been watching him closely from above. Guardiola would give Palmer his debut at the age of 18 against Burnley in September of 2020, but would scarcely deploy him in the subsequent seasons. Considering his obvious skill and flashes of finesse, the decision to leave him out of the first team was less of an indictment on Palmer's performances, but more so a reflection of the world-class roster that not only occupied Man City starting 11, but their strikingly deep bench as well. Nonetheless, the boy persisted and was able to add treble winner to his ever-evolving resume, but ultimately found little solace in the prestigious silverware considering his minimal impact. And as the hunger and ambition began to spill into the beginning of the 2023-24 season, the Cup finally runneth over at the very end of transfer deadline day. Cole Palmer has now been confirmed as a Chelsea player at Stamford Bridge. There's a huge amount of money that Chelsea's spending on potential. To me, there's always trepidation when Pep Guardiola lets go of a player. In a move that served as the unexpected aftershock of Chelsea's seismic summer transfer window, Cole Palmer traded Sky Blue for Royal Blue, leaving his boyhood club behind to join Todd Bully's football project, an unorthodox adventure in accounting and amortization as the American businessman spent over a billion pounds across three transfer windows by signing World Football's youngest talents to eight-year contracts, a controversial conquest that left the club in a tumultuous state upon Palmer's arrival, with the Blues finishing in the bottom half of the table for the first time since 1996, scoring a record low 38 goals in the process, a far cry from the treble-winning side that Palmer hadn't even intended on leaving in the first place. My thing was to never leave, see. That was not my intention. I wanted to go on loan for a year, come back and be ready for the first team. But they said I can't go on loan, like either stay or you get sold. So then Chelsea rang me. And Cole's first month at the club seemed to justify his hesitance, with the new signing failing to register a goal or an assist in his first four appearances, in a stretch that saw Chelsea only score twice in 360 minutes of play. But the second the skepticism entered the atmosphere, Palmer proceeded to take everyone's breath away. On matchday 8, the 21-year-old announced himself as Chelsea's new penalty taker. Palmer would step up to the penalty spot again the very next week, this time managing to score against Premier League heavyweights Arsenal, securing a point in a fixture that no one predicted would be competitive. And like Deja Vu, the man in form would take his place 12 yards out just two weeks later, converting a penalty against London rivals Tottenham Hotspur, and ending Ange Postakoglou's 10-game unbeaten streak in the process. Cole had racked up three goals and two assists in his last four league games, and had gained the trust of Mauricio Pochettino heading into their clash with his former club, Man City. Yes, we trust him. And he's still young, but he needs to improve. But he's showing great quality. The boy from Wythenshawe was no longer in the shadow of stars, and had firmly placed the spotlight upon himself. And in the climax of a seven-goal thriller that saw seven different goal scorers find the back of the net, the former citizen, now donning royal blue, stepped up to the penalty spot once again. Cole Palmer steps up and scores a penalty against the club that taught him everything he knows. It's 4-4 at Stamford Bridge, and you have to pay enormous respect to a young man who kept his nerve and despatched that penalty. Palmer was the unanimous man of the match and had gained the respect he was after all this time, and not just from old friends, but from the English media as well. But we talked about Cole Palmer, and he looks, I mean, what a talented young man. The confidence, the belief to say, give me the ball, will you? It's not a problem. The month of December would catapult Palmer into further stardom thanks to a sniper-like strike against Manchester United. Two goal contributions against Sheffield United 10 days later, and a brace against Luton Town on the 30th of December. With his perfectly timed ball roll past the goalkeeper, slight shoulder feint to lose the last defender, and calm finish in front of the away fans fitting of the celebration that's earned him his nickname. Yeah, that's why they call him Cole Palmer, innit? He entered 2024 as the most exciting talent in the country, and would have all of football media watching his every kick for the next three months. What an intelligent footballer he is, that how he can, you know, he can tuck back into midfield, he knows the positions to get into from a defensive perspective on the ball, off the ball. 21-year-old Cole Palmer was absolutely sensational. By the end of March, Palmer's stock was still steadily rising. Statistics, once a source of frustration, now served as a testament of his burgeoning brilliance. With his two goal contributions against Newcastle on the 11th, and a stellar brace against Burnley on the 30th, pushing him to 13 goals and 8 assists for the domestic season. Totals that simultaneously highlighted the surplus of skill at Palmer's disposal, as well as the poverty of the players surrounding him. He was the closest thing the Premier League had seen to a one-man team since Dimitri Payet back in 2015, as he single-handedly took the responsibility off the back of a billion pound squad that was full of uninspired and underperforming players. And if the season had ended on March 30th, Palmer would have been able to hold his head high, likely winning Chelsea's Player of the Year award with zero resistance. But the season ends in May, and April would make fools of anyone who thought Palmer had reached the peak of his promise, as he saved the most profound performances of his career for the business end of the season, starting with matchday 31. But as miraculous as his last-minute winner against United was, Palmer's first senior hat trick would only serve as the appetizer for the full-course meal he would dish out less two-sided coin of conversion, with Palmer's head, left foot and right foot clinically converting his uncompromising confidence in the face of petulant chaos converting even his most cynical critics to full-blown believers. Mancunian echoes of doubt have been replaced by lion-like roars of the Chelsea crowd, and in the unforgiving landscape of the Premier League, Cole Palmer's story nears the conclusion of its first chapter, with 21 goals and 10 assists in 32 league games, putting him just behind Erling Haaland, who just finished as runner-up in the recent Ballon d'Or. And perhaps comparing Palmer to a Man City player is the inevitable by-product of a football imagination that can't help but wonder how on earth Pep Guardiola could let go of such a talent in the first place, a talent whose ascension is far from over, as he spearheads an individual enterprise carefully planned to achieve his aims, or in other words, a project. But more specifically, the Cole Palmer Project.