Cole Palmer loving the good vibes at Chelsea, on and off the pitch

Among Chelsea’s collection of young diamonds just waiting (and working hard) to get polished into the most dazzling of all gemstones in football, Cole Palmer has shined brightest so far this season.

The 21-year-old arrived with some senior experience with Manchester City already of course, but since taking over one of the starting positions in attack four games ago, he’s put in three Man of the Match performances, prompting the team to finally score a few goals, even. We’ve averaged 2.25 goals per Palmer start; we’ve averaged 1.17 in the other seven games. Small sample sizes, to be sure, but Palmer has been easy on the eyes, delightful in his vision and touches, and promising in his work rate and execution. He’s already set a career high with four goals combined for City and Chelsea, including his first Premier League goal as well as his first at Stamford Bridge.

The first(s) of many more to come, hopefully!

As well as on the pitch, Palmer has fit in seamlessly off the pitch with the rest of his teammates. Mauricio Pochettino has done an excellent job in creating a family atmosphere among his young charges — not unexpectedly, but still quite welcomely — and that should be pay dividends just as tellingly as these players keep growing, learning, and eventually winning together

“We’re going in the right direction. It’s starting to click, as you can see from the results in the past four games, but there’s much more to come and we need to keep going [...] There are many things to improve on but there are also positive things. So we just need to build on those, try to push forward and go and kick on for the next game.”

“I’m loving it here at Chelsea. Every day is good, even off the pitch with the lads. There’s a good vibe here and everything’s good, so I’m loving it.

“I came to Chelsea to try to make an impact. I’m happy I’ve done it straight away. Credit to the lads, the lads are all good, helped me settle in and stuff, but I’ve just got to try to improve every day and give more and more.”

-Cole Palmer; source: Chelsea FC

Obviously, our last result turned rather sour at the end, but there’s still plenty to be happy about as we look to keep improving game by game, month by month, season by season. Palmer’s looking like a key figure in those plans already.