That was absolutely insane. Cole Palmer will dominate the headlines after an afternoon where he was simply unstoppable: smarter, faster, and more acutely aware of space and angles than any other player on the field, as if he were moving through air that was lighter and thinner. It helped that Brighton were both dazzling and fun, but also incredibly fragile, like a pair of glittery nylons attempting to play football. The final score was 4-2, but it could have been anything by the end.
Palmer was also brilliantly ruthless, further proving that there is no more effective or entertaining No 10 in the Premier League. Gareth Southgate favored Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham, and Bukayo Saka in the summer, which was a decent selection of talent. However, it is inconceivable that any England team could fail to build around Palmer’s talent in shaping the game in front of him.
Once again, the numbers looked absurd. A hat-trick in 10 minutes. Four goals in 20 minutes. Six goals and four assists in his last five league games. Palmer has made a habit of this, of games where he just gets on a roll and overwhelms whoever stands in front of him.
One reason this happens is that he is unique. There are very few maverick, genuinely unpredictable creative talents in the modern elite game. Palmer is as close as you’re going to get, a player who goes everywhere, plays off the cuff, and invents the day in front of him. It is a logical, hard-nosed tactic to give him the ball as much as possible against heavily coached systems teams. The element of surprise is highly disruptive. If free, inventive, unplanned movements are likely to take you outside your comfort zone, Palmer has the capacity to tear a defense apart.
True, it helps if an opposition manager chooses to shoot a whaling harpoon through his own foot, which is basically what Fabian Hürzeler did here by playing, if not the stupidest high defensive line of all time, then perhaps the stupidest yet. Clearly, Hürzeler is an ideologue with a set way of playing, even if that set way is destined to become an act of self-immolation.
There will be talk of a crazy game and a mad half-hour. But the form of madness in play was the Albert Einstein definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So high was the Brighton line in the first half you wondered if Hürzeler had seen Lewis Dunk and Adam Webster play before, neither of whom is likely to challenge for the world indoor 60m title any time soon.
The moment Chelsea worked this out midway through the first half, Brighton were toast, the game dissolving into an experiment into how many times Nicolas Jackson could beat Dunk in a straight footrace from the halfway line (answer: many, many times). Cue a genuinely odd 10 minutes, during which the same movement just kept happening. On 19 minutes, Palmer hit a post after surging through the centre on a lovely swift counter. Moments later the same thing happened and Palmer scored, but was offside. Two minutes later, he did score, the goal made by a terrible pass back from Webster. Two minutes after that Jadon Sancho scored from the same through pass, but Noni Madueke was offside. On 27 minutes, Chelsea were awarded a penalty as Sancho was tripped after another quick diagonal break. Palmer (of course) rolled it into the corner (of course). Finally, on 29 minutes, Pervis Estupináñ was booked for hauling back yet another break from halfway. Palmer lifted the free-kick beautifully into the top corner. On 41 minutes, he got his fourth, this time nipping into a huge channel of space on the left.
It was a surreal interlude, a period where one obvious tactical mistake overrides all the good work in other spaces. Brighton had even taken the lead, Georginio Rutter heading in after some poor Chelsea defending. Brighton’s second was scored by Carlos Baleba, still only 20 and a seriously good all-round midfield prospect (you know who could do with one of those? Quick. Sell a piece of wall from the back of the stand).
By the final whistle, that decisive period of chaos seemed to speak to the pop-up nature of both these football projects and their respective place on the development curve. If Hürzeler learned a hard lesson, there is no doubt Chelsea are becoming more settled, even, whisper it, vaguely sane. Palmer, Madueke, Sancho, and Jackson is a balanced and seriously lively front four. Yes, the starting XI cost £520m even with Levi Colwill and Sancho chucked in for free. But in Palmer, Chelsea have something priceless. Not just a hyper-talented player in a sublime moment of form; but one who is also ideally suited in style to a team that is learning its own way to play.
