Cole Palmer remains £42m Man City success story rather than mistake before Chelsea visit

Cole Palmer will look to pile more misery on his former club Manchester City when Chelsea visit on Saturday afternoon but bigger picture suggests he is evidence of why champions have been so effective

Cole Palmer remains a Manchester City success story.

The 22-year-old will be one of four former City youngsters in Chelsea’s squad for Saturday’s Premier League meeting at the Etihad, alongside Jadon Sancho, Romeo Lavia and Tosin Adarabioyo.

And while it is easy to remark upon how badly Pep Guardiola could have done with the Premier League’s maverick-in-chief during this season’s injury crisis, the reality is Palmer remains the clearest evidence there is of a thriving underage setup.

Letting him go early last season was an unquestionable mistake in isolation but it is wise to look at the wider picture here.

He was a player with plenty of potential that was not being entirely fulfilled when Guardiola waved goodbye and the club accepted £42m in pure profit – a sizable sum when it comes to the newfound wariness of profit and sustainability regulations.

And everyone, apart from Palmer himself, has been blown away by his seemingly overnight growth into arguably England’s best attacker.

But letting one slip through the net is simply the cost of doing business for a machine that has seen fees exceeding £170m earned for more than 20 academy players in the past three seasons.

Take team-mate Lavia as one of many examples. He joined Southampton for £10m with a 20 per cent sell-on that banked another £10m when he then moved to Stamford Bridge.

Indeed Lavia is one of six to have moved to St Mary’s, who have paid City a combined £73m for Gavin Bazunu, Taylor Harwood-Bellis, Sam Edozie, Juan Larios and Shea Charles in two and a half years.

How about £15m from Burnley for James Trafford or a similar amount for Carlos Forbs to join Ajax, who have then loaned him to Wolves, where he has barely played? Those funds have been put back into signings that Pep Guardiola has wanted, in turn bringing an unprecedented era of success.

Should Palmer pile yet more misery on City this weekend there will be an irresistible temptation to say he is proving a point to those who doubted him. And some who have departed have worn that chip on their shoulder for motivation.

Not long after David Brooks arrived at Bournemouth he spoke candidly to several journalists from an executive box at their stadium about turning up to an awards night for City’s academy stars and noticing a host of new arrivals.

“There were about seven players I had never seen before – all foreign lads playing international football,” he said. “There ended up being a squad of 25-30 players at under-18 level – as a young lad you need to be playing and I just wasn’t doing that. I think the writing was on the wall.”

Brooks was ultimately let go because City felt he was too small and he has overcome significant challenges to build himself a good career on the south coast. Equally he is a reminder of how fine the margins are and why it is inevitable and acceptable for judgment calls to go wrong. Deep down Morgan Rogers at Aston Villa might feel similarly.

Sure, fans would love a team packed with homegrown youngsters lifting trophies. But the modern high-end youth setup is above all a revenue source, a machine that forms part of the business.

Clubs develop a host of youngsters with not just the A-goal of using them for their first team but one eye on selling them on for increasingly large sums of money.

Palmer is both the one that Manchester City should have kept and a massive sign of how well their system is working. Both are equally true – regardless of the easy narrative available this weekend.

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