Data-driven Player of the Month: Cole Palmer - Are Chelsea producing a new Lampard?
However, it seems he made the right move. After all, he had spent two years begging the management of last year's Champions League winners for a swap so that he could start more often. Indeed, in that time, he only made the starting lineup three times. Now he's on a rampage in London. With 20 goals (nine penalties), he's the second-top scorer in the Premier League.
Palmer scored seven of those goals in April and has thus been named Player of the Month by data analytics company Opta in association with Flashscore.
Palmer is the discovery of the season in England. Only Erling Haaland is ahead of him in the Premier League's goalscoring charts, and that's not by any margin but just a single goal. What's more, he is also the youngest player in the 'top five' European leagues to score at least 20 goals this season.
He made his national team debut last November when he came on for the last half hour of a European Championship qualifier against Malta. All this during what was actually his debut season in senior football.
Doubters may argue that he has scored nine penalties among his 20 league goals but, on the other hand, it shows Palmer's mental resilience as well as Chelsea coach Mauricio Pochettino's confidence in him. These high-pressure situations are typically handled by experienced players in most teams.
In April, he scored five of his seven goals from open play and, incredibly, four against Everton. In doing so, he became only the fourth Chelsea player in history (after Frank Lampard, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Gianluca Vialli) to manage that in the Premier League.
Moreover, thanks to his hat-trick against Manchester United 11 days earlier, he became the first Chelsea player to score two hat-tricks in the same month. Aside from Palmer, only Didier Drogba, who had the advantage of actually being a striker, has managed two in a calendar year.
In addition to his obvious contribution to the offence, Palmer was highly effective last month, sending 12 shots on goal, which, with seven goals, amounts to a conversion rate of 58%.
Alongside that, he also had the highest number of total shots in the competition (22). In the context of such production, fans will recall legendary English midfielders who had no problem regularly scoring over 10 goals a season, such as Steven Gerrard and Lampard, who, like Palmer, starred for Chelsea.
The lanky youngster (189 cm) likes to find space between the opposition's midfield and defence, from where he makes his unstoppable forays down the right side of the pitch or through the middle. Moreover, he shows versatility in finishing. He usually shoots with his stronger left foot, however, this season he has already scored three times with his weaker right foot and once even with his head.
He can strike from close range as well as from distance. Only his generational contemporary Phil Foden has surpassed his tally of three such goals this season with five goals from outside the box.
Of the players with more than 500 minutes in the current English league campaign, only Newcastle's Alexander Isak (103 mins per goal) and Haaland (105 mins per goal) need fewer minutes per goal than Palmer (109 mins). He has, however, been involved in goal-scoring moves the most often of any player (one per 75 minutes). He is followed by Kevin De Bruyne (76 mins), Haaland (85 mins) and Mohamed Salah (87 mins).
