“I am a player who always wants the ball … anywhere,” Cole Palmer says, and he certainly wanted it on Sunday; 92 minutes on the clock, his new club, Chelsea, 4-3 down against his old one, Manchester City, but now with a penalty for an improbable draw at Stamford Bridge. “When I saw the ref give it, I thought: ‘It’s my time,’” he says.
Palmer had a word with his teammate Raheem Sterling, another former City player, and told him that, yes, he wanted it. “Raz was like: ‘Fine,’” Palmer says, and it was easy to see a parallel to Chelsea’s game at Burnley in early October when Sterling won a penalty at 1-1 and the ball just seemed to find Palmer.
