Cole Palmer is going nowhere but Chelsea cannot ignore Jamie Carragher warning | OneFootball

Carragher questioned if Chelsea can keep Palmer if they fail to qualify for the Champions League

Of all Chelsea’s players, you could forgive Cole Palmer for looking a bit miffed.

And yet here was the same Seagulls side, condemning Chelsea to back-to-back defeats in the space of six days across two competitions and two dismal performances, more or less shutting Palmer out of both games. Across 180 minutes, the playmaker’s influence was negligible, even with Bart Verbruggen helpfully throwing one of his crosses into his own net.

In contrast to the ice-cold front that is the trademark of Palmer’s positive demeanour, the 22-year-old is not a player who hides his frustrations well. The arms go up, someone gets an earful and at full-time at the Amex Stadium, he was one of several players who had to be urged by coaching staff to acknowledge what remained of the travelling support, plenty having left once Yankuba Minteh put the seal on a 3-0 win.

Palmer did not hide his frustration at the Amex, as Chelsea’s Champions League hopes were dented by Brighton

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On a night when Enzo Maresca accused his players of lacking desire, Palmer’s outward show of emotion may be no bad thing.

“It’s a bit like with the fans,” Maresca explained. “When you don’t win the game it’s normal that they’re not happy.”

Tellingly, though, there was a warning to all of Chelsea’s adolescent squad that teenage strops will do them no good.

“We need all of them, in this moment, to be more positive,” Maresca added. “This is a moment where we need to stick together and try to finish in the best way.”

Positivity is not an easy thing to come by right now, with Chelsea down to sixth, on a run of three wins in 11 and getting shorter on attacking options with each passing week.

Patience has been called for by the manager but would appear to be in short supply: two months after the utopian embrace that followed a 5-1 drubbing of Southampton, chants of “We want our Chelsea back” dominated the second half at the Amex.

The lurch from all is well, to all gloom and doom has been sudden and alarming, but if you’re in the market for alarmism then more still was forthcoming from Jamie Carragher, the former Liverpool defender speaking as a pundit on Sky Sports.

“Cole Palmer is one of the best players in the Premier League. He’s good enough to be competing for the biggest honours in the Premier League and Champions League.

Speaking after the Brighton game, Carragher said: ‘The problem is that the best players in the team now won’t wait.’

Sky Sports

“He scored in a European Championship final. That’s something that Chelsea have got to keep in the back of their mind.

“He won’t wait around for this idea that, in a couple of years, we’ll get to the Champions League.”

Now, the obvious riposte is that he doesn’t really have a choice. Last summer, only 12 months after joining the club, Palmer signed a two-year extension to what was initially a seven-year deal, meaning he is under contract at the Bridge until 2033.

In other words, Palmer could finish this season, play another four and still from that point have as many years left on his contract as Bukayo Saka signed up to when “committing his long-term future to Arsenal” in 2023.

He could play another six, through to 2031, before the time left to run on his deal even became a major factor in negotiations. By then, he would be 29.

What would it take, assuming fitness, to buy Palmer out of his Chelsea contract any time soon? No one has got close to the world record £200million paid by Paris Saint-Germain for Neymar since it was set eight years ago but that is surely the ballpark you’d be in.

That would make Palmer prohibitively expensive to just about any club in England or Europe, hence the trend among players of that calibre towards running contracts down, as with Kylian Mbappe and his move to Real Madrid.

Still, though, Carragher’s warning did hint at something broader in that this patient, project-building approach still has its urgent needs. Move too slowly, and who knows what state the first laid bricks will be in by the time the last slots into place.