Chelsea might no longer be ‘Cole Palmer FC’ but they are half the team without their talisman | OneFootball

Blues badly missed Palmer as they surrendered against Arsenal

Chelsea lacked any real threat in their limp defeat at Emirates Stadium

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Your matchday briefing on Chelsea, featuring team news and expert analysis from Malik Ouzia

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Playing without Cole Palmer for the first time in the Premier League all season, Chelsea were held at arm’s length by an Arsenal side who, with their own attacking struggles, declared early on the 1-0 lead forged by Mikel Merino’s set-piece header and never looked like setting it slip.

That should have been a dangerous approach from Mikel Arteta’s side, who perhaps needed the win more desperately here to avoid being dragged back into the scrap for the top-four. This is not the watertight Arsenal defence of last season and visitors with more verve and originality than Chelsea might have located its pores.

Instead, Enzo Maresca’s side managed only two shots on target, both from full-back Marc Cucurella hit straight at David Raya, even if the Arsenal goalkeeper very nearly fumbled the first of them in.

Chelsea were held at arm’s length by Arsenal on a frustrating afternoon at Emirates Stadium

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Palmer, kept out by a minor injury, had started 46 of Chelsea’s previous 47 League games, the one exception also coming here when ill for this fixture towards the back end of last season. On that occasion, the Blues were hammered 5-0, the sole defeat in an otherwise unbeaten 15-game run that ended Mauricio Pochettino’s reign.

This Arsenal, though, are not the same force and nor - by necessity in the last few weeks - have Chelsea been quite such a one-man band.

A year ago, perception of Chelsea as a team of Palmer plus 10 others was at its peak, the season’s revelation having scored four against Everton the previous week and 10 in his last five games. The only certain consequence of his absence here was that his longest drought in a Chelsea shirt will drag on into next month.

And so, the unknown: with reliance on the 22-year-old seemingly at an all-time low, could Chelsea strike what would be a statement blow minus the player to whom they always turn? Or would, even with the scoring touch having deserted him, the Englishman’s absence be too keenly felt?

For 35 minutes, in truth, Palmer’s absence felt an irrelevance, with Arsenal so dominant that it was hard to imagine any one player could have changed much.

Chelsea, in that time, were ragged, hallmarked by a petulant performance from a midfield pair that, in price-tag and experience, if not age, are supposed to provide Chelsea’s steady, senior core.

Enzo Fernandez, pushed higher up the pitch in Palmer’s absence, played like a man using Sunday football as an outlet for the pent-up anger of a long working week. The Argentine charged around midfield on the search for trouble and, lacking the mobility to keep permanent tabs on Arsenal’s rotations, instead locked onto the more fixed target of referee Chris Kavanagh’s ear.

Moises Caicedo, usually a milder character, was hot in his slipstream, leaving the odd foot in and offering out Leandro Trossard near the corner flag. One booking away from a two-match suspension, the Ecuadorian had the air of a player angling for a little more time at home over the international break. Kavanagh, though, would not oblige.

When that pair did eventually turn attentions to the football itself, Chelsea began to play. From sustaining no pressure whatsoever during that opening period, for a spell either side of half-time, the game was played almost exclusively in the Arsenal half.

It was then, in the ascendancy, that Chelsea missed Palmer’s guile most. Though he has not been scoring himself for some time now, the underlying metrics suggest his lack of assists in recent months are something of a statistical freak. You might not back him to take his own chances at the moment, but still you fancy he might have made one or two for somebody else.

With Palmer joining Nicolas Jackson, Noni Madueke, Marc Guiu and Mykhailo Mudryk on the sidelines, Maresca had almost nothing to bring off his bench.

Jadon Sancho and Christopher Nkunku, both horribly ineffective, were dragged for a midfielder and academy graduate. The Italian’s final, all-in gamble with five minutes left was to refresh half of his back-four.

Neither Chelsea, nor Maresca will get much sympathy here from an Arsenal who themselves have been missing the entirety of their first-choice attack for almost two months.

Ahead of this fixture, though, Maresca warned that there is a significant gulf between the clubs. Even with both in similarly depleted states, that much remains clear.