This "very special" Chelsea star caught everyone by surprise, claims pundit
10/03/2024 03:57 AM
Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville believes Cole Palmer has taken everyone by surprise at Chelsea since his transfer from Manchester City last summer.
The England international was not a regular in the Man City first-team during his time there, but he's taken his game to another level since making the move to Chelsea, where he's now surely up there with the very finest players in the world.
Palmer made headlines again at the weekend with a remarkable four goals for the Blues in just one half as they beat Brighton in the Premier League, and Neville admits the west London giants have a "very special" player on their hands.
City have produced talents like Phil Foden and Rico Lewis from their academy in recent times, but Palmer is clearly another exceptional success story of their youth system, and Neville joked that it's not often they get their decisions so wrong.
No one knew how good Cole Palmer was going to be for Chelsea
Neville insists, however, that even Chelsea couldn't have known what a good player they'd be getting when they snapped up Palmer from City.
Speaking on the US edition of The Overlap in the video below, Neville was full of praise for Palmer as he explained what makes him so special…
Asked if Palmer is a generational talent, Neville said: "I didn't think so a year and a half ago … you obviously looked at a silky football player some with great technical ability – someone you felt might struggle to find a position, you know one of those players that sometimes you look at and think 'well, is he a winger, is he a number 10, is he a floating player?'
"But the problem is when you add goals to a player, and then you can play all across the front line, you are then looking at someone who's very special.
"You cannot believe right now how City have got that one so wrong, because we know they got a good price for him, but his trajectory is absolutely fantastic and City don't normally get those ones wrong.
"There's no way is there that Chelsea knew how good he was going to be. None of us did. I didn't hear anybody say that they were going to get a 15, 20, 25 goal a season man – that's not what we thought we were getting with Cole Palmer. I thought he would just be an effective football player, he would actually play good passes, who would actually understand the game and play his position well.
"I never thought for one second we were going to get someone who would become a game changer, a match winner regularly for his team."
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