Should Enzo Maresca drop Cole Palmer? He’s currently Chelsea’s worst player…

Enzo Maresca claimed Cole Palmer’s goalscoring drought was a “mental” issue ahead of the game, insisting it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with him, his tactics or a style of football that’s seen Chelsea slip from title challengers to Champions League qualification outsiders having become properly embedded at Stamford Bridge.

“For sure, it’s mental. I don’t think it’s tactical, I don’t think it’s technical, because Cole is still the same player who scored this season with us. The style of football we play is the same one. The manager is the same one. The club is the same one. So nothing changes around Cole and Cole doesn’t change.”

Palmer is clearly suffering from a lack of confidence. While for a long time through this barren run it looked as though it was just a matter of time before he would bring it to an end, the swagger that’s been the primary feature of his outstanding football in his first season-and-a-half at Chelsea now appears to have all-but deserted him, to the point where – unbelievably – we’re not sure he even merits a place in the starting lineup.

He’s started 32 of the 33 Premier League games he’s been available for this season, with the one game he was rested for against Brentford, after eight without a goal, leading Chelsea fans to lose their collective minds at Maresca leaving him out.

It’s now 12 blanks for Palmer after this vital win over Everton, in which he was comfortably Chelsea’s worst player, to the extent where if he wasn’t Cole Palmer he would have been hooked at half-time and given time to reflect on his recent performances from the bench against Liverpool next weekend. And maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

He had no shots, created no chances, lost possession on five occasions and carried nothing like the threat of Pedro Neto on the right, Noni Madueke on the left and Nicolas Jackson through the middle.

Maresca has got to shoulder at least some of the blame for Palmer’s poor form and acknowledge that whether it is solely a mentality issue or something more complex involving his position, the tactics or the style, it’s his job to get more from Palmer in what remains an uphill battle to finish in the top five.

And it’s difficult to sell yourself as an all-seeing manager whose philosophy and tactics are beyond reproach having stumbled upon a front three which works 50 games into the season.

This was the first game Madueke has played under Maresca on the left wing and he could so easily have scored a brace having been denied brilliantly on two occasions by Jordan Pickford after cutting in on his right foot, which doesn’t look all that much weaker than his left, which he favoured to stretch the pitch, get to the byline and deliver crosses.

The same was true on the right as Pedro Neto now looks something like the player they signed from Wolves, building on the confidence gained through his superb winner against Fulham last weekend. And him being close to a two-footed player meant that like Madueke on the left, he genuinely threatened to go both ways, keeping the defenders guessing to open up space for Palmer, a more advanced Enzo Fernandez and Jackson in the middle.

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It was a brilliant finish from Jackson after excellent work from the all-round excellent Trevoh Chalobah to win the ball on halfway. The much-maligned striker so often takes too many touches in favourable positions, and avoiding increased opportunity to think in such situations is clearly the way to go for a guy who often suffers from brain fades in when instinct should take over.

It was a decent performance under pressure from all the Chelsea players except for Palmer, whom they will surely need to rediscover something approaching his best form if they are to pick up the required points in a harrowing last four games of the season against Liverpool (H), Newcastle (A), Manchester United (H) and Nottingham Forest (A).

An unwillingness to alter the game plan to aid Palmer means Maresca needs to find a new way of revitalising the playmaker and rid him of this “mental” block. With his current motivational methods having if anything an adverse effect on him, and given he quite clearly doesn’t give two sh*ts what the fans think anyway, dropping him to the bench for Liverpool may be worth considering in order to light a fire under a player whose embers are barely glowing right now.