“I don’t think we did” – Cole Palmer agrees with his manager but denies the evidence all fans saw | OneFootball

Cole Palmer collapsed to his haunches at full time in the Everton game a week ago which Chelsea drew. He clearly feels the pain of points dropped. Yesterday must have been even worse. His goal put his team ahead, but they collapsed late on and lost at home to Fulham for the first time in 45 years.

We heard this week that Palmer “loves” football – so what can he take from his assessment of this game? What did the midfielder think of his team’s capitulation yesterday? He spoke to the club’s official website at full time:

“It’s football, it happens. We lost control for 20 minutes and they scored two. We were winning for the majority of the game, but to lose at the end is difficult. First half we played well. We controlled the game. We had quite a few chances,” Palmer mused sadly.

“Second half we seemed to lose a bit of control. They are a good transition team, they like to run, direct, so we got caught with their game and we paid the price. I don’t think we lost energy or intensity, like the manager said we just lost control of the game, and we turned it into a game they’re better than us at. We need to try and manage the game a bit better.”

Palmer denies the obvious

Enzo Maresca with Cole Palmer after a win over Aston Villa. (Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)

Palmer, along with his manager Enzo Maresca, seem to be in denial that it was a gradual loss of energy which hurt them. It’s no coincidence that their control faded along with their legs.

Both Palmer and Maresca admit the game opened up which suited Fulham more than us, but don’t seem willing to accept that this was in part down to the tiring legs in Blue who could no longer keep up the energetic movement required to keep the ball high up the pitch.