“Chelsea tried to sign him” – David Ornstein praises club’s underrated piece of transfer business | OneFootball

David Ornstein has praised Manchester City for keeping hold of a top young talent who could well be the next Cole Palmer.

Speaking on a podcast with the Athletic, Ornstein suggested Man City managing to keep Nico O’Reilly despite efforts from Chelsea to sign him.

Chelsea notably signed Palmer from City when he was a relatively unknown youngster, but he ended up exploding with some world class form upon his move to Stamford Bridge.

It remains to be seen if O’Reilly will go down a similar path, but it seems Chelsea clearly felt this was another City raid that might be worth doing, with Ornstein even suggesting he looks like someone with the potential to be Palmer ‘mark 2’…

O’Reilly could now have a clear pathway to breaking into Pep Guardiola’s first-team if the club were that keen on keeping him, so it will be interesting to see if he gets more playing time soon.

So far, the 19-year-old has only made six competitive games for the club, and only one of those has come in the Premier League.

Nico O’Reilly could have been a good signing for Chelsea

Nico O’Reilly in action for Manchester City (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Chelsea fans will no doubt be disappointed to learn that their club were in the mix for such a highly rated talent but couldn’t get a deal done.

In many ways, it also looks like it could end up being a bit of a waste of O’Reilly’s potential, as he’d probably have been more likely to get regular playing time at Chelsea.

The west London giants really launched Palmer’s career after he was overlooked by City, so perhaps the England Under-20 international would have done well to go down a similar path.

City now surely need to make more use of their fine crop of academy players or they will inevitably lose more of them like they did with Palmer, and it could be a big boost for a number of their Premier League rivals.