Evening Standard
·29 April 2026
Cole Palmer urged to leave 'toxic' Chelsea as Manchester United rumours resurface

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Yahoo sportsEvening Standard
·29 April 2026

Worries grow that club’s struggles could limit player’s potential
Cole Palmer has been urged to leave Chelsea after the club’s ‘toxic’ dressing room forced Liam Rosenior out of his job.
The Blues find themselves without a manager once again as Rosenior was relieved of his duties following a dismal 3-0 loss at Brighton earlier this month.
Widespread reports emerged following his dismissal claiming Rosenior failed to win the respect of his players in his brief time with the club.
Gareth Barry, the second-most experienced player in Premier League history, worries the mood in the Chelsea dressing room is affecting Palmer’s performances and, subsequently, limiting his career prospects.
Barry’s quotes come as reports linking Palmer with a move to Manchester United continue to proliferate, with the player said to be homesick in London.
Palmer himself has laughed off those claims, but as far as Barry is concerned, Chelsea’s ongoing turmoil will not make him feel any more at home in the south.
“Any player wants to be playing in a settled dressing room at a settled club,” he said. “If you’re in a dressing room that is perhaps slightly toxic, it is hard to go into training and perform every day, it’s not nice.
“We all know the dressing room is so strong if you get two or three players starting to doubt the manager’s beliefs or his methods, it naturally creeps in. If those few players aren’t happy, they’re not going to be performing at the levels they can if something’s eating away at them, and it can leak into the whole team’s performance.
“If that was the case at Chelsea it would be affecting the dressing room.”
Barry continued: “I’ve had small periods of that in my career. The manager is desperate, they can see that this player is affecting the dressing room, they want to get them out, but in football, you can’t do that overnight. Liam Rosenior wouldn’t have had a chance to do something about it.
“Any player, Cole Palmer and others, if they aren’t seeing a long-term settled future at Chelsea, it’s natural for them and their agents to start looking and thinking ‘where can we go and achieve things’ in what ultimately is a quick career as a football player.”
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