Chelsea's Co-Sporting Directors Express Pride in Palmer Deal, says Ansser Sadiq

Palmer made a significant move from Manchester City to Chelsea for a hefty fee of £42 million a year ago, and since then, he has excelled and never looked back.

Chelsea’s co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart praised him this week.

Winstanley stated to the Telegraph: “No doubt he can, no doubt. He’s got a bit of maverick personality on the pitch, you can see that. You can see it in training, you can see it in the games. He’s got that ability.”

Stewart said: “We didn’t think necessarily that we’d be able to get him here really, did we? There was a feeling that ‘No, Cole Palmer won’t be for sale’.

“We’d been speaking about him throughout that window and then as it came towards the latter stage of the window, we felt like we wanted to do something else and do something around that area of the pitch. He came up again and we all said ‘let’s go for it, let’s see what’s possible’.

“And then there seemed to be a little bit of feedback that there could be something there.”

Winstanley added: “We’ve all been aware of Cole since he was very young. He’d consistently flagged up on the profile of player that we were looking for in that position, but as we headed through the window, when you check in and you get told ‘No, not for sale, not for sale’.

“We weren’t going to get him on loan and that wouldn’t have suited us either. We would have always preferred a permanent deal with someone like Cole. Then you enter a period when all of a sudden there’s a sense this might have some legs, ‘let’s push, let’s go’.

“And then once you set off on that journey, you’ve got to try to see it through if there’s a chance. To be fair to Cole, he showed great desire to come here and that’s the sort of player we want, the personality and the desire to come here.”