Chelsea flop was ahead of Palmer, now he’s only played 192 mins this season

In the context of Chelsea‘s recent history, the 2023/24 summer transfer window ended up being extremely important.

In the process of spending around £386m, they brought 12 new players to the club which was funded by a lot of sales, namely bringing in £226m, offloading nine players on permanent transfers, whilst also letting go of five players on a free transfer.

This has been a mixed bag so far, with the likes of Christopher Nkunku, Roméo Lavia, Axel Disasi and Robert Sanchez not turning out as they would have hoped, with the likes of Lesley Ugochukwu, Djordje Petrovic and Deivid Washington are still under the microscope to see how/if they are implemented.

However, there have also been some overwhelming successes from this window already. Take the likes of Moises Caicedo, Nicolas Jackson, and of course, Cole Palmer.

The numbers behind Cole Palmer’s rise at Chelsea

It may seem like a long time ago now, but Palmer was signed back in the 2023/24 summer transfer window, and wasn’t a first-team starter right from the off.

His first involvements came from the bench under Mauricio Pochettino, playing 28 minutes against Nottingham Forest, playing 27 minutes against Bournemouth and playing 22 minutes against Aston Villa.

It didn’t take long for Palmer to become the star man at Chelsea, though, going on to make 78 appearances for the club so far

, scoring 39 goals and providing 21 assists across 6,319 minutes.

The 22-year-old is unlucky to not have more assists, especially this campaign, having the highest xA (expected assists) numbers in the league with 7.34, which is 0.33 more than Mohamed Salah.

But in those first weeks of Pochettino, we did see a particular Chelsea star trusted in an unfamiliar role, which could have impacted the trajectory of Palmer had he not been injured at the time.

Chelsea’s 193-minute man

Carney Chukwuemeka was signed by Chelsea in the 2022/23 summer transfer window, joining from Aston Villa for a fee of around £20m. He arrived at the Bridge to quite a significant amount of hype, notably described by Villa’s CEO, Christian Purslow, as “probably the best 16-year-old in England.”

Well, after moving to London, his first season at the club was hindered by injuries, but he still managed to make 15 first-team appearances, totaling 362 minutes.

The midfielder then started the campaign under Pochettino playing in an attacking midfield/right-wing hybrid role, starting the first two games of the Premier League season, playing well against Liverpool in the opener, before also netting against West Ham in the second game.

Unfortunately, Chukwuemeka suffered a knee injury in that same West Ham match, forcing him off and keeping him out of action until January 2024.

By this point, Palmer was, of course, thriving and therefore the midfielder struggled for consistent minutes for the rest of the campaign, also hindered with more injury issues.

Fast-forward to now, the English midfielder was unable to break into the first team under Enzo Maresca, only playing a total of 130 minutes for Chelsea, 116 of those minutes coming in the UEFA Conference League.

Due to his lack of minutes, Chukwuemeka went on loan in the January window to Borussia Dortmund, where he has again suffered with injuries and only totaled 63 minutes for the German outfit.

If the young attacking midfielder can gather fitness and start to get consistent minutes somewhere, he clearly has the talent to explode, but it would be very interesting to know in an alternate universe, how the careers of both players could have differed had that West Ham injury not occurred.