This post is very long, I hope you will read it patiently.
First of all, Palmer cannot become the absolute core of Chelsea. This is undoubtedly true. A player with mediocre physical fitness, mediocre speed, and defective feet is destined to be unable to reach a particularly high level. If he is regarded as the absolute core, then his teammates must make many sacrifices for him and set the stage for him. But even so, it may not have good results. There have been too many Chelsea players playing for Palmer this season to help him find his form, but there are many scenes of him completely failing to seize the opportunity. Even if Palmer's condition improves, the upper limit of this approach is to qualify for the European Cup. It is too difficult to defeat strong teams or compete for the championship. The pattern of the Club World Cup final cannot be replicated. After that game, everyone knew that Palmer was powerful when there was space, so they would mark him more strictly. However, due to his physical limitations and the inability to find a way to deal with it, he would hide his body and be unable to produce sustained and stable output. This is his limitation, and it cannot be changed no matter what.
But are those who claim that Palmer is useless are right? I don't think so. First of all, we have to be clear that Palmer is a player with extremely obvious advantages and disadvantages. I can say that he has no upper limit now. In the end, there will be no room for improvement. However, now he is unable to ensure the most basic lower limit performance. This is related to his own mentality, but also to the team's tactical chaos and the poor strength of the wingers. We feel that the current use of the bubble by the team is wrong. When playing against Manchester City, his heat map showed that he was a right back. His physical strength was limited after the injury, but he also focused too much on defense, which prevented him from deeply participating in the frontcourt attack. This in turn resulted in a weak attack and did not pose any strong threat to Manchester City's goal. Doku has a very strong breakthrough ability. Even so, Palmer should not be assigned to mark, because his physical condition is far different from Doku. Even if he is asked to mark, he will not be able to achieve good results. And Palmer was supposed to be one of Chelsea's most threatening frontcourt points. In the Premier League game led by Ronaldo, he was defeated by Rodley in the first half. However, in this game, he had very few opportunities to enter the penalty area. This was almost equivalent to giving up the offense and purely playing defense. However, Chelsea's defense could not withstand the fierce attack of Manchester City who replaced the priest, so they ultimately lost the game. Palmer had no performance in this game. This cannot be entirely blamed on him. After all, he is in the finals of the championship. As an offensive powerhouse, it is almost difficult to enter the penalty area. As a result, Pedro lacks support and can only gamble on luck. This tactic is really incredible. In addition, Chelsea's wingers are extremely poor and cannot provide any help to the players in the center. It is difficult to achieve even the most basic space opening, and their awareness of movement, passing and cutting is also quite average. This immediately prevents the opponent from accumulating too many defensive resources on the wing. Once Palmer gets the ball in the middle, as many as two or three people will come to help defend. Due to his physical condition, it is absolutely impossible for him to perform very well in this situation. Of course, there is absolutely no way to blame him.
The current community's views on Palmer are extremely extreme. They either magnify his strengths without restraint, or they seize on his shortcomings and criticize him non-stop. This is really unnecessary, after all, every player has advantages and disadvantages. Now, Palmer's performance has been completely stretched this season. The reason is that he was injured and has not regained his form. In addition, there are problems with the tactics used by the team, which caused him to excessively defend, which in turn prevented him from playing to his strengths. In addition, his shortcomings were caught by his opponents and magnified infinitely, and no one could help him share the corresponding responsibilities, which ultimately led to the current situation.
A set of simple measures implemented to solve the problem include the arrival of Alonso. The midfielder position in his system is designed for Palmer, and a tactical system is created to adapt to it, so that Palmer can be as close to the penalty area as possible to give full play to the offensive advantage. In the summer window, buy one or two wingers with breakthrough capabilities to create output conditions for them to open up the space and reduce the burden on the bubble so that it has a starting space. In this way, although the bubble will not be able to return to the situation of the first season, it will at least be much stronger than the current season of poor performance.
Due to limited conditions, it is impossible for Palmer to become the absolute core. However, there is no problem for him to become an important puzzle piece for the team. Facing the six-time champion Paris, a person who can score two goals and one assist is definitely not a weak person. The problems he faces are extremely complex, and he must not use two poles. No matter how you look at it, there is no benefit in praising him to a very high position or completely ignoring him. Wait for Alonso to come and make further observations. It is okay to praise him if he plays well and criticize him if he plays poorly. However, it is too early to draw conclusions now.