“Very important” detail about Cole Palmer does not send the message Maresca thinks it does | OneFootball

Cole Palmer is the talk of the town at the moment, and for once it’s not for good reasons.

As Chelsea suffer through another dreadful run of form, there’s a lot of attention on the playmaker and his rising frustration. He’s been seen taking it out on the pitch, and pundits have even speculated about him potentially pushing to leave the club if he doesn’t feel he’s getting closer to winning trophies.

Manager Enzo Maresca has already been asked about it multiple times, and in the embargoed section of yesterday’s press conference he revealed something interesting which he thinks proves that Palmer isn’t giving up on his team yet:

“Absolutely [Cole is committed]. I will tell you one detail that is very important. Every six or seven months, we do a physical test. We did one in pre-season, and we did one last week. He was the strongest one of all the squad. He was the one that ‘won’ the test. It was a physical test. It shows his desire. Not only on the ball. He is working hard and he is doing fantastic.”

Tests prove Palmer can do more to help his team

Cole Palmer and Christopher Nkunku complain about a decision.

We’re not sure this shows exactly what Maresca thinks. What it says is that Palmer has the physical capacity to work incredibly hard. If anything, it makes his aversion to defending even more criminal because we now know he’s more than capable of doing it if he wants.

We’re not keen on Palmer wasting his energy defending anyway – the team should be set up to keep him in dangerous areas, and we don’t want to see him chasing back defending his own box all the time. However when the side is struggling like they are now, we do expect him to pull his finger out and help out rather than act up.