Liam Delap and Cole Palmer are old pals from their Manchester City days and their telepathic relationship was clear after just 20 minutes together again at Chelsea.
Chelsea had three shots on target in the first half of their opening Club World Cup game against LAFC and wouldn’t have had any had it not been for Nicolas Jackson.
Shoulder-shrug emojis accompanied social media posts questioning his place in the starting lineup ahead of £30m signing Liam Delap on the back of an up and down season for the Senegal international which left even his greatest fanboys *hand in the air* with little option but to accept that the undeniably entertaining and often effective striker needed at least some competition for a starting spot. That Newcastle brainfart was the final straw.
He had the fewest touches in the opening half (16) but ended it with the second-highest WhoScored rating (7.8), bettered only by goalscorer Pedro Neto (7.9), after setting the winger up beautifully for that goal with typical strength and quick feet to hold the ball up before sliding a perfectly weighted pass through the defence for Neto to then chop inside and fire past Hugo Lloris.
Jackson had already shown his undervalued ability to dance past challenges before playing Noni Madueke in with another excellent through ball and again to set himself up with a body swerve at pace in the box before slipping at the vital moment.
He does appear to slip or experience misfortune when it comes to the crunch a fair bit more than most strikers though, to the extent that it probably can’t be dismissed as bad luck. A header shortly after half-time from a Neto cross was cleared off the line and had we not watched Jackson over the last two seasons we would be far more willing to write that moment off as a tough break, but we have seen his shots blocked and the woodwork struck in favourable positions all too frequently to excuse him.
Delap might not have scored either and failed to open his account on his Blues debut here having replaced Jackson shortly after the hour mark. But what we were treated to were hugely promising signs of his relationship with Cole Palmer – built during their time in the Manchester City academy – reigniting.
“I think they’re so linked because of the ability of one to serve the other,” said Brian Barry-Murphy, the coach who worked with both players in the Man City Elite Development Squad.
“You’ll have seen Cole speak recently about how he wants to play forward, be expressive and aggressive. Liam is the one who will be willing to make those movements.
“At City, we would always speak about Liam having no reason not to make the run because Cole will find you. And it’ll be very interesting to see how that will manifest itself under Enzo Maresca.”
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We saw two great examples of that here. Twice Palmer found himself in space in his favoured spot in the right-attacking midfield position and on both occasions Delap span in behind the LAFC defence to receive the pass from his academy pal. It was second nature to the pair of them.
The first link-up led Delap to outsmuscle a defender to get to the byline before pulling the ball back into space, and the second saw him drift a delightful cross in for Enzo Fernandez to control and fire past Lloris to secure victory for Chelsea.
The former Ipswich man was clumsy in other instances, not unlike Jackson, and arguably didn’t do as much as his competition for that starting spot in the build-up, though he did produce one delightful back heel with his back to goal to set Chelsea away at one point.
It’s not like Jackson doesn’t have a decent working relationship with Palmer – it would be difficult for any Premier League striker not to given the playmaker’s vision and quality – but in the 20 minutes Delap and Palmer spent on the pitch together it felt as though they didn’t need to think about what the other was going to do, they just did it.
And that connection between striker and best player will surely be a big factor for Maresca, if not the biggest, when deciding who will be his main man up top next season.
