Tag: Chelseas

Welcome to The Radar, a Sky Sports column in which Nick Wright uses a blend of data and opinion to shed light on need-to-know stories from up and down the Premier League. This week:

Palmer second only to Salah?
Murillo’s outrageous long shots
Van Nistelrooy’s Leicester woes

Foden face-off for ever-improving Palmer

Cole Palmer will hope to show Manchester City what might have been when he returns to the Etihad Stadium on Saturday. The 22-year-old, a revelation for Chelsea following his £42.5m arrival last season, continues to go from strength to strength.

Chelsea go into the game two points ahead of City in the table, a 20-point swing from last season which can be partly attributed to the contrasting fortunes of their No 10s.

While Phil Foden is only just finding form after an indifferent start to the campaign, Palmer has picked up where he left off, the goals and assists flowing to such an extent that only Mohamed Salah has a higher combined total since his move to Chelsea.

Foden, of course, won a PFA and FWA Player of the Year double last year. He has also scored four goals in his last two Premier League appearances, against Brentford and Ipswich.

Over the course of the last season and a half, though, Palmer comes out comfortably on top both as a scorer and a creator.

Their meeting makes for an intriguing sub-plot given Foden’s presence was one of the reasons for his fellow academy graduate’s exit. And Palmer’s exploits this term are arguably even more impressive than last season’s given the attention he is facing.

Palmer is now man-marked in most games. He is being fouled 2.1 times per 90 minutes compared to only 0.9 times last season. “No one really knew much about him when he came so it was a free-hit for him,” said Paul Merson last month. “Now he is the big boy. Teams are trying to stop him but they can’t.

“That shows you how good he is.”

Palmer’s solution, implemented with the help of head coach Enzo Maresca, has been to take up positions right across the front line. He is nominally Chelsea’s No 10, having mostly been used off the right last season, but he goes where the space is, encouraged to drift.

It helps, of course, that he remains seemingly impervious to pressure, a trait typified by his stoppage-time penalty in Chelsea’s 4-4 draw against his former club at Stamford Bridge last term and one which continues to shine through in his perfect spot-kick record.

He has embraced an altogether different level of responsibility to Foden, accounting for 46 per cent of Chelsea’s goals and assists since his arrival, compared to Foden’s 25 per cent for Manchester City. That responsibility is not limited to scoring or creating, either.

Palmer did neither in Chelsea’s 3-1 win over Wolves on Monday Night Football and yet Maresca labelled his performance one of his best. “He was there asking for the ball in a difficult moment for the team in the second half,” he said. “He was the leader of the team.”

It is more evidence of a player adapting, evolving and finding ways to keep getting better. Saturday’s meeting with his former club Manchester City, and his former team-mate Foden, is a chance to show them his progress first-hand.

Maverick Murillo is worth celebrating

Nottingham Forest supporters had more reasons to celebrate this week as Murillo and Chris Wood signed new contracts at the City Ground. The pair have been key figures in the side’s remarkable transformation under head coach Nuno Espirito Santo.

Murillo, in particular, has been a joy to watch since his arrival from Corinthians at the start of last season. A keen dribbler who loves a shot from long range, the Brazil international’s maverick tendencies are rare in the modern game and rarer still from a centre-back.

His player-of-the-match performance in the recent 1-1 draw with leaders Liverpool summed up the breadth of his offering.

Murillo was imperious defensively, his total of 17 clearances the highest by any player in a Premier League game all season. But he also took any chance he got to rampage forward.

In the first half, there was a thumping shot from 35 yards out which whistled just past Alisson’s right-hand post. In the second, he had an effort blocked from near the halfway line.

Last season, he tried his luck from even further out, taking two shots from inside his own half, one of which, against Luton in March, measured at 78 yards from goal and required a panicked save from a back-peddling Thomas Kaminski, who pushed it over the bar.

His ambition shines through on the pitch and it was also clear in conversation with him soon after his arrival in England last season, when he declared Forest could reach “unimaginable heights”.

It felt fanciful but here were are. Two-thirds into the campaign, Forest sit third, level on points with second-placed Arsenal. His new contract suggests he believes the best is yet to come.

Van Nistelrooy under pressure

Ruud van Nistelrooy takes his struggling Leicester side to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday having been booed and taunted with cries of “you don’t know what you’re doing” by fans during their 2-0 loss to Fulham at the King Power Stadium.

The catalyst was the withdrawal of playmaker Bilal El Khannouss when Leicester were trailing in the second half. Van Nistelrooy opted not to explain the decision after the game but it was made to look worse by Fulham’s second goal arriving minutes later.

The Dutchman’s tenure started well, with Leicester beating West Ham 3-1 in his opening game in charge at the beginning of December. But they have not won since. The defeat to Fulham was their seventh in a row in the Premier League. Performances have got worse, not better.

Steve Cooper was not a popular appointment given his ties to Nottingham Forest but supporters fear the club have harmed their chances of staying up, rather than helped them, with their choice of replacement and it is easy to understand why.

Van Nistelrooy has of course been dealt a difficult hand. The squad is clearly underpowered and progress to strengthen it has been slow in the January transfer window. But the mood in the stands will only worsen if they see more of the same against Spurs on Sunday.

Live Radar: What’s on Sky this weekend?

Man City host Chelsea for the Saturday Night Football fixture, with coverage starting on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event from 5pm ahead of the 5.30pm kick-off.

Super Sunday sees Crystal Palace and Brentford go head to head in the early game, kicking off at 2pm, with Aston Villa taking on Graham Potter’s West Ham in the later kick-off at 4.30pm. Coverage of that double-header begins on Sky Sports Premier League and Main Event at 1pm.

Read last week’s Radar column

Myles Lewis-Skelly’s eye-catching emergence for Arsenal was the focus of the column last week. There was also a look at the numbers showing Manchester City’s Savinho as the Premier League’s most effective open-play creator.