Do Manchester City regret letting Cole Palmer go?

For Manchester City, Cole Palmer’s move to Chelsea last summer and his subsequent spellbinding form is a case of, ‘It is what it is’.

It may be disappointing to see one of their own thriving elsewhere, but a sense of regret cannot really come into it. Palmer wanted to leave, and City got a big fee of £42.5million ($52.8m at today’s rates) for him — which, admittedly, looks a little cheap now.

City wanted Palmer to stay, that is certainly true. After Riyad Mahrez pulled out of their pre-season tour to Japan and South Korea so he could complete a transfer to Al Ahli of Saudi Arabia, City called Palmer, who was on holiday after helping England win the Under-21 European Championship a couple of weeks earlier, to ask him to get back to Manchester in time for the flight east.

There was talk of a loan move within the Premier League to promoted Burnley but City eventually assured Palmer that he would get more minutes this season after limited game time in 2022-23. Palmer had already decided that he wanted to move on, though.

So could City have done anything differently so that he did not want to leave? Maybe give him more games?

The simple fact was that, last season, Palmer had Mahrez and Bernardo Silva ahead of him in the pecking order on the right wing. That should speak for itself.

A large part of the reason Mahrez left was because of the competition for places on that side; he had been playing in important league and cup matches but was annoyed at missing the very biggest games of City’s season, including the Champions League knockout games and the FA Cup final. Bernardo was the go-to man for those.

Palmer celebrates his four goals on Monday (Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

Those selection decisions genuinely pained Pep Guardiola.

“He is always grumpy with me when he doesn’t play all the time, he makes me notice how grumpy he feels,” the City manager said after Mahrez scored a hat-trick in the FA Cup semi-final against Sheffield United, three days after he had been an unused substitute for the Champions League quarter-final second leg away to Bayern Munich. Guardiola also said he had “lost the battle to make him understand how important he is for the group”.

Mahrez, it should not be forgotten, was a key player for City who could generally be relied upon to be plugged straight into the side and contribute a goal or assist.

Palmer is doing that now, with the 21-year-old level with Erling Haaland at the top of the Premier League scoring table following his four-goal haul against Everton on Monday night. He is one of the big stories heading into the FA Cup semi-final against City at Wembley on Saturday.

It is easy to look at him now and see him as the perfect replacement for Mahrez, and no doubt that is why people see his City exit as a “mistake”.

Palmer has been so good that he is in the conversation to be named PFA Player of the Year. The favourite for that award is Phil Foden, who has been outstanding for City, especially in the past two months, scoring hat-tricks against Brentford and Aston Villa, two decisive goals against Manchester United, one against Real Madrid and a winner against Bournemouth.

Foden has been in scintillating form in the middle of the pitch, so much so that even neutrals are calling for him to be the fulcrum of Gareth Southgate’s England team for the European Championship this summer, despite the prominence of Jude Bellingham at Real Madrid this season, and Palmer at Chelsea.

And yet… Foden was in a similar position to Mahrez last season: he was a regular starter, but he was not in the strongest XI that Guardiola turned to for the very biggest matches, like the two Champions League semi-finals against Madrid, the final of that competition against Inter Milan (he replaced an injured Kevin De Bruyne in the first half) or the FA Cup final derby against United.

Foden had some fitness problems in the second half of the season that held him back but others were also simply playing better than him, so were Guardiola’s preferences for those crunch games.

A year ago, Foden was not seen as an option through the middle, leaving him to compete with Mahrez and Bernardo on the right, or Jack Grealish — the team’s key cog, particularly in the biggest games — on the left. In the middle, his biggest ‘rival’ would have been De Bruyne, whose quality speaks for itself. Ilkay Gundogan’s place was assured due to his defensive acumen and ability to help City control matches, traits that Foden is only developing now.

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The bar is staggeringly high at City, with even Foden and Mahrez not getting the opportunities they would have felt they deserved. So, what chance did Palmer have?

City, of course, completed the treble last season, winning 18 matches out of 20 between the end of February and May, drawing the other two — a run that only ended once they had got their hands on the Premier League trophy. Then they picked up the winning habit again for the two finals.

It was a pretty extraordinary feat of squad management, even if it came at the cost of Palmer’s unhappiness.

Then there is the matter of Palmer’s own merits.

This is not a case of sour grapes from City’s point of view, because it was published by The Athletic last February: Palmer had been given some opportunities early that season, but his level had dropped after an unfortunate injury he had picked up in January 2022.

Guardiola regretted not giving Palmer more opportunities (Lindsey Parnaby/AFP via Getty Images)

Palmer was starting to make his breakthrough in the first half of that 2021-22 season, making a handful of appearances. With another opportunity to play in the FA Cup third round against Swindon Town, he decided to ignore an injury. That, though, forced him to miss the rest of the campaign, just as he was starting to look impressive.

A year later — in the middle of last season — it was felt that his confidence had dropped, and his body language reflected that.

As has become obvious in recent months, body language is a huge thing for Guardiola, and months before Palmer was sold to Chelsea, it was already being considered that he could go out on loan to help rekindle his spark. It was even suggested he had suffered from the 2022 departure of Guardiola’s assistant Juanma Lillo, who always pushed him to reach new heights. Lillo returned to City last summer but by that point, the die had been cast.

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Palmer only played 850 minutes for City last season, with his seven starts generally coming in cup games or dead rubbers. That looks like a mistake in hindsight and he would have been affronted to see others, such as Sergio Gomez and Kalvin Phillips, come on as substitutes instead of him — but that would have also been the case for Foden, Mahrez and others had Palmer come on instead of them. It is a delicate balance.

The Palmer of last season was not the same proposition he is now. He may argue that if given more chances he would have been, which may well be the case, but it is not as easy to get into the City team as any other in the Premier League.

“After two or three seasons, he wanted more minutes than the last season. I understand completely,” Guardiola said in February. “If Palmer had the minutes I gave to Phil (Foden) from the beginning, he would be here — but I didn’t give them to him. That is my responsibility.

“Why? Because of Bernardo, Riyad, Phil. In that moment, I chose the other ones.”

With a treble in the bag and City fighting to follow it up with the double this season, it is hard to pick too many holes in those decisions.

It is easy to talk about ‘mistakes’ and ‘regrets’ and it is certainly not an ideal scenario for City, but there is a mundane reality: the choices made were very understandable, and everybody involved can be confident they did the right thing at the time.

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This was a missed opportunity for City - they made it too easy for Madrid

(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)