How Cole Palmer managed to redeem Chelsea after an embarrassing 2022/23 Premier League season
The Premier League is the most viewed football event reaching 920 million homes across 189 countries and has been played by some of footballs greatest including: Frank Lampard and Thierry Henry.
At just 22-years-old Cole Palmer is already starting to give these players a run for their money, even being described as “the best player in the Premier League” at the moment by Sky Sports News.
The 2022/23 season of the Premier League was a particularly embarrassing one for Chelsea football club after spending €611 million on 17 new players. The club only received a total of 44 points, having lost 16 of their 38 matches. But there is only so much you can blame the players with a turnover of four managers across the campaign. Luckily, the squad managed to pull up their socks for the next season and increased their points by an impressive 43.18%, accumulating 63 points.
The undeniable redemption across the two Premier League seasons undoubtedly falls at Cole Palmers feet, the player scored 22 of Chelsea’s 77 goals in the 2023/24 Premier League. Being the only Chelsea player to score more than 10 goals across the league, with Palmer also landmarking the 4,000th goal scored at Stamford Bridge by the club.
After being signed to the club in 2023 following his transfer from Manchester City for £40 million, the young English player has achieved great success for the club so far, managing to make it the third most goals scored in a Premier League season ever by Chelsea.
Across the two seasons Chelsea manged to advance from 12th position to 6th, securing themselves a spot in the Europa conference league. With top players Cole Palmer, Christopher Nkunku and Moises Caicedo playing for the clubs 2024/25 squad, it looks likely that last season’s success won’t just be a one off.
The above chart acts in great aid displaying just how much Chelsea managed to progress across the seasons, improving almost every single one of their stats by a staggering amount.
Despite Chelsea’s redemption being the talk of the competition other clubs have also achieved great success over the last two seasons. Manchester City and their golden boy Erling Haaland manged to set history in the 2022/23 season after he beat the previous record and scored 36 goals across the season. Despite winning the 2022/23 season with 89 points, they still managed to up the stakes for the next season achieving 91 points making for an overall improvement of 2.25%.
Man City is a force to be reckoned with winning 5 of the last 6 Premier Leagues, there success is undeniable losing only 3 of their 38 matches in the last season, dropping their number of loses by 66.67%, in just one season. These kinds of statistics have us left thinking it would be no surprise for them to win this season.
But this doesn’t mean the team wasn’t put under pressure by any other clubs Pep Guardiola said during a mid-season interview with the Premier League that “If we draw a game, we’re not going to win the Premier League” in relation to how well Arsenal were playing, and how close in points they were.
The chart above displays, the overall points obtained by the 17 clubs which were present in the last two complete Premier League’s. Showcasing which clubs have been front runners across the seasons and allow for an easy comparison and understanding of who's got the advantage for the next.
Throughout the last two campaigns Arsenal have been within inches of first place, being just two points away from taking the top spot from Man City last season. They sat in first place for 248 days of the competition, but as the end of the season loomed Arsenal lost their cool and didn’t win any of their next 4 matches, clearing room for Man City to claim victory once again.
Just because Arsenal came second in the last two seasons doesn’t mean they lacked success or progression; their overall points increased by 5.95% across the last two completed seasons. Although they did lose two more games than the prior year all was made up by decreasing the number of games, they lost by 20%.
Unfortunately, not every club in the league is able to make advancements each season, Brentford’s points decreased by a staggering 33.9% from the 2022/23 to the 2023/24 league. These results do not come as a surprise with the team encountering 18 fitness related absences which all spanned over at least five game periods. As well as the fact that they lost 10 more games than the prior season, the good news however is that they have managed to scrape themselves into their fourth consecutive Premier League and hopefully have better luck with injuries this time around.
Brentford manager Thomas Frank even said to the Premier League that it was the “toughest season” that he had ever faced in his six years of managing the club, but still seems optimistic and happy to commence the 2024/25 season saying “I’m very happy to be at the club. I have got a fantastic job”.
Chelsea 4-4 Man City was voted ‘2023/24’s best match’ of the season by the Premier League, after being stuck mid table throughout the previous season Chelsea and their squad have managed to redeem both themselves and the club.