Cole Palmer qualities picked out that make him better than Jude Bellingham & Phil Foden – with Chelsea playmaker ranked about England team-mates from Real Madrid & Man City

At 22 years of age, Palmer has seen his stock soar over the course of the last 18 months. After taking the decision to leave Manchester City for Stamford Bridge for £40 million ($52m) in the summer of 2023, the talented playmaker has enjoyed a meteoric rise.

Palmer plundered 25 goals across his debut campaign for Chelsea, earning him a place in England’s squad for Euro 2024 – where he scored in the final defeat to Spain. He has a further six efforts to his name this season – including a record-setting four-goal first-half haul against Brighton – and is considered by some to be a hotter prospect than former City colleague Foden and Real Madrid superstar Bellingham.

Ex-Chelsea winger Pat Nevin has told BetVictor of that standing: “If you’ve watched football for a long time, you can just tell when a player has that special something. The first time I watched Cole Palmer, he was seeing things that other players weren’t. Every time other top players, like Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden, got the ball, they were looking up and pinging it straight to Palmer. You don’t do that to average players, you do it to seriously good players.

“To some degree it’s a shame for England that they’ve got Phil Foden, Jude Bellingham and Jack Grealish all in a similar position. However, I think Palmer has vision and skill levels that just set him apart from those players. I’m slightly hesitant to say that because I love Foden as a player, but Palmer has everything. If you wanted to buy an English player, I don’t know that there’s anyone you’d pick ahead of Cole Palmer.”

Palmer fills a No.10 role for Chelsea, while being pushed wide by club and country at times, but Nevin sees him as a playmaker cut from the same cloth as a Belgian legend that has also graced the books in Manchester and west London. The Scot added: “When Cole Palmer first broke through at Manchester City he came on as a sub and after just three or four touches I said, ‘I think I’ve seen the new Kevin De Bruyne’, which shocked a lot of people.

“In terms of comparing him to former Chelsea players, I think De Bruyne comes closest. He’s not a winger, he’s more of a wide attacker or a number 10. People throw in names like Eden Hazard and Frank Lampard but he’s not like either of those two, he’s just Cole Palmer. When you think about players in their first season at a club, not many have been better than him. Especially when you consider the fact that Chelsea only paid £40 million for him; it’s the best piece of business they’ve done by a country mile.”

Palmer is up to 11 senior caps for England, having previously helped then to European U21 Championship glory, and faces fierce competition for places when it comes to the Three Lions – with Bukayo Saka, Anthony Gordon, Noni Madueke, Morgan Gibbs-White, Eberechi Eze and Marcus Rashford among the other creative talents available to incoming Three Lions boss Thomas Tuchel.