Cole Palmer’s Chelsea goal celebration explained

The disarming nonchalance Cole Palmer has shown throughout his debut season at Chelsea can mask how little top-flight experience the 21-year-old possessed before moving to west London.

Palmer joined Manchester City as a six-year-old but was only afforded three Premier League starts in Pep Guardiola’s superteam. Chelsea paid £42.5m for an attacking midfielder with promise but one with fewer league goals (zero) or assists (one) than Liverpool’s goalkeeper Alisson (one goal, three assists).

The gamble has well and truly paid off. Even in Mauricio Pochettino’s chaotic squad, Palmer has effortlessly excelled, strolling through games and stroking the ball into the back of the net with alarming regularity. Before the halfway stage of his debut campaign, Palmer had already scored more Premier League goals than any Chelsea player managed across the entirety of the previous season.

On such a prolific run, Palmer has had ample opportunity to craft a trademark goal celebration. The player fittingly known as ‘Cold Palmer’ has taken to shivering after his recent strikes, but the meaning behind the move goes deeper than his nickname.

Palmer traded ‘Cole’ in for ‘Cold’ within weeks of his arrival at Chelsea. The ephemeral left-footer became just the second 21-year-old to ever score a Premier League penalty for the Blues on his first league start against Burnley and underscored his reputation for extreme composure when Arsenal visited Stamford Bridge the following week.

In the face of Raheem Sterling’s clawing advances, Palmer shrugged off his former City teammate to take and convert a first-half penalty against the Gunners. When Guardiola’s City side arrived in west London, there was no debate as Palmer assumed responsibility in stoppage time, coolly slotting a 95th-minute spot kick against a goalkeeper he called his colleague just three months earlier.

However, Palmer celebrated that nerveless penalty with a nonchalant shrug. “I can’t really go and celebrate how I would [normally] celebrate if I have scored a 95th-minute equaliser because it would have been disrespectful,” Palmer explained, “so I just decided to do a shrug. I don’t know why.”

It wasn’t until Chelsea’s trip to Luton Town for their final game of 2023 that Palmer unveiled a celebration that perfectly captured his start to life with the Blues….