As usual, one game isn't enough to fully get a grasp of what a player is like overall. And, while I've not watched as many games as I'd have liked of Cole Palmer, he actually played as a right sided number 8 here, which is a position I've not seen him start in before.
In the few senior games I have seen, he's mostly played either as a right or left winger for Manchester City and England's under 21's. This ended up being quite an interesting insight into the types of positions he would likely take up as a number 8 in future games.
Palmer's heatmap vs Luxembourg
Palmer occupied the right-central channel for the most part during this game and even came quite deep to initiate buildup at times. He utilised drag-backs and quick feints to create space to progress the ball by faking his man out.
Although, he often found himself in space inbetween the midfield and defensive lines which allowed play to progress quickly and got England into the final 3rd often. It's fair to say that Luxembourg's press wasn't amazing, but it also showed Cole's spatial awareness in midfield areas.
He did score and get an assist on the night, while generally giving the Luxembourg defence hell on the ball around the oppositions penalty area as the play got into the final 3rd.
I do think that he overplayed a few sequences and got himself into traffic. Although you could also argue that his gravity meant that he attracted a lot of defensive attention, which made his assist all the more impressive to thread the ball inbetween the defence.
One other problem I thought he had was that, even though they've played together at international level in the past, Palmer seemed to almost get in Noni Madueke's way sometimes. This is a minor problem, but by shutting off an inside run or not taking a chance to run in behind when Madueke was on the corner of the box, the attacks fizzled out a bit.
It seemed to take Palmer a while to find his long ball range in this game as he misplaced most of his long balls in the first half, before finding his range better in the second half. Generally speaking though his vision and technique is quite nice and could be a real asset in the future.
That said it was more interesting to see how willing he was to run into the box to get onto clipped balls over the top. Despite not being found every time, it was encouraging to see his willingness to make dangerous runs and awareness to get in on defender's blind sides.
He seemed to have a good understanding with Hayden Hackney, (who played as the 6 in this game) with the two actually linking up for a good chance in the first half coming from a clipped ball from Hackney. Hackney also found Palmer in between the lines a few times with shorter passes in the final and middle 3rd.
Cole is a good off-ball scanner and had a good picture of where play was when receiving the ball against Luxembourg which was a big help in build-up.
He didn't press intensively with much consistency for the full 90 minutes, but he was willing to pressure his man on a few occasions and he even closed down play in the opposition's left-back area.
For his goal, Palmer crashed the box in acres of space and hit a powerful effort in off the bar from a Bynoe-Gittens cut-back. This sort of attacking movement is a massive plus for Palmer's potential as a number 8 and getting into the box for late cut-backs or rebounds will be huge for Chelsea this coming season (if he gets minutes as an 8/if that's where his long term positional future potentially lies).
Palmer took a big step in leaving Man City this summer and his long term minutes prospects at Chelsea are a bit up in the air at the moment. That said, he's a player I've enjoyed watching for a little while now so I do, begrudgingly, hope he does well for Chelsea.
At the time of writing the full match is still available on England's YouTube channel if you want to see Palmer or anyone else's performance:
Full match:
Highlights:
