Shock discovery (re)made over Cole Palmer and Manchester United after ‘awkward’ question

It seems as though ‘Cole Palmer used to support Manchester United’ will be a biannual obsession if he continues to punish an ‘unforgivable’ Ferguson mistake.

Palm reading
Six short months have passed since minds were lost over the revelation that Cole Palmer supported Manchester United as a boy. As someone born in Wythenshawe in 2002 whose formative years came while the Red Devils were at worst one of the two best teams in the country might.

Those ties were presumably cut a while ago for a player who joined Manchester City’s academy at under-eight level and besides, it wouldn’t even matter if they weren’t. A professional footballer being a fan of a certain club has absolutely no bearing on, well, anything really. It is maybe vaguely interesting for a brief moment, but has no value of any sort beyond that.

READ MORE: 16 Conclusions on Chelsea 4-3 Man Utd: Ten Hag sack, Palmer saves Poch, Casemiro and Caicedo awful

With that said, certain elements of the media are either relying on extremely short-term memories, or simply displaying them when writing about Palmer’s latest heroics for Chelsea, which just so happened to come against Manchester United.

Most people of a Manchester United persuasion would have been suitably despondent at Palmer’s remarkably late hat-trick turning victory back into defeat at Stamford Bridge, but Mike Walters of the Daily Mirror reveals one final blow:

And Palmer added one last twist of the knife – by admitting he grew up as a United fan.

He did nothing of the sort. The interviewer put it to him that he was a Manchester United fan – “is that right?” – and his knife-twisting response was: “Yeah, when I was growing up. I was a United fan. So yeah.”

Steady on, Cole. The pain is still fresh, mate. Have some mercy.

Walters’ Mirror colleague, John Cross, adds that ‘just to rub salt in the wounds, Palmer was a boyhood Manchester United fan’. Because if he had a ‘Zola 25’ shirt growing up it obviously would not have hurt Manchester United quite as much to lose a game after leading in the 99th minute.

You’re as Cole as ice
That theme continues in The Sun website, who bring us this offering:

Cole Palmer awkwardly asked about being a Man Utd supporter live on TNT moments after hat-trick as throwback pic emerges

It was ‘awkward’ in no way other than the prospect of people caring about a 21-year-old once having an affinity for the most successful club of his childhood when he was growing up, which has long since stopped and wouldn’t even matter if it hadn’t. And is also not a revelation.

That ‘throwback pic’ emerges fairly frequently, including after the last time Chelsea and Manchester United played and he inevitably scored. Because to reiterate, him supporting Manchester United a very long time ago neither matters nor is particularly surprising.

Chelsea dagger
Trust Samuel Luckhurst to be the adult in the room. He cares not who Palmer supported as a boy. But he does choose a bizarre stick with which to beat Manchester United when loads of great ones are scattered all over the sodding ground.

‘Palmer was heckled with “City reject” by the United fans,’ he writes in the Manchester Evening News. ‘If only the Wythenshawe-born boyhood Red had rejected City. It is unforgivable that United let him slip through the net.’

It is indeed ‘unforgivable’ that Manchester United did not spot Palmer’s brilliance before he joined Manchester City. It is definitely not a weird and massive reach to claim they ‘let him slip through the net’ when he was eight. They should have known then he would become brilliant and score a hat-trick against them 14 years later.

(Wyett lines) vision dreams of passion
As Charlie Wyett writes in The Sun:

Chelsea led through goals from Conor Gallagher and Palmer before United took command with two from Alejandro Garnacho and one from Bruno Fernandes.

But Ten Hag must know if United play like this against Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday they will be utterly humiliated.

Did they not pretty much play like this against Liverpool at Old Trafford literally two games ago? Three weeks have passed since they beat Jurgen Klopp’s side 4-3 in a ludicrously chaotic game featuring a stupid amount of shots and some daft defending from both sides. That does sound familiar.

Shot in the arm
‘This is what happens when you give teams so many shots on goal. Having faced a total of 81 attempts in their previous three Premier League games against Manchester City, Everton and Brentford, United allowed Chelsea a staggering 47 here’ – Chris Wheeler, Daily Mail.

Hang on… the most shots any team has ever had in a Premier League game is 44, by Manchester City against QPR when Sergio Aguero did that thing. Did Chelsea really clear that bar by three clear shots against Manchester United?

Well no. Erik ten Hag’s were bad but not record-breakingly so – at least in this case. There were 47 shots in the entire match but they were split 28-19 in favour of the hosts.

Although if Chelsea did have 47 shots, Ten Hag would still be calling them lucky while claiming Manchester United deserved to win.

Sub-liminal messaging
The leading story on the Daily Mirror website, however, is not about which player supported which club as a boy. It’s not even about Chelsea versus Manchester United at all. Instead, it is about how ‘Klopp makes pointed Liverpool substitution admission after Salah’s angry response to being hooked with scores level in Sheffield United win’.

The ‘pointed Liverpool substitution admission’ seems to be that “our general game until I think we made the changes was not great,” and the substitutions “were really helpful”.

Not sure that needs to be admitted, pointedly or otherwise, when all four of those changes helped Liverpool turn a 1-1 draw into a 3-1 win with one of them scoring. Klopp also said nothing about Salah specifically. And Liverpool went top.

But sure, ‘manager says substitutions helped in game where substitutions clearly helped’ is the biggest news in football.