Chelsea must rue losing top talent for £0, now he's worth more than Palmer (2024)

Frenetic. It's a good word to wrap Chelsea up in summation, for the BlueCo ownership has been at best a rollercoaster and at worst a high-magnitude earthquake.

Still, despite the travails of the past few seasons, the Blues are looking to take steps toward the Champions League, an elusive thing for the west Londoners, who only won Europe's elite club competition three years ago.

Transfer dealing has lashed something of a schism through the fanbase, with some excited by the ambition but plenty dubious about the scattergun strategy.

Despite this, despite all of the issues, Chelsea signed Cole Palmer from Manchester City for a £40m figure, with the England international tearing the Premier League to shreds last season, now considered among Europe's finest forwards.

Cole Palmer's Chelsea career so far

Palmer has just kept on scoring, goals, goals, goals. When he's not striking into the back of the net, the England international is channelling his incredible playmaking ability, evidenced by his hat-trick of assists for Noni Madueke at Molineux in August.

Across just 50 Chelsea appearances, the 22-year-old has scored 26 goals and provided 19 assists, with Chelsea skipper Reece James already pronouncing him to be "one of the best in the world".

It's so exciting to let the imagination wander and conceive the routes Palmer could take over the coming years, with most conclusions surely circling on prolific success for one of England's finest modern talents.

With each passing day, that £40m figure looks to be more of a bargain, with Transfermarkt crunching the numbers and concluding that Palmer already has a market value of £68m, though it's conceivable that the price that would need to be paid would be far, far more.

However, what would you do if you realised Chelsea once had a player in their ranks who has since built his career up elsewhere and indeed yields a market price stretching above that of Chelsea's main man.

His name's Declan Rice.

Chelsea must rue losing Declan Rice

Chelsea let Rice slip through their fingers when he was just 14 years old. There was a perceived lack of physicality that led scouts to hum and haw before opting against guiding him through the upper ranks of formative football and toward Chelsea's first team.

Now 25 years old, a European trophy winner with West Ham United and the midfield general of Arsenal's fast-rising team, with Mikel Arteta sculpting the Gunners into one of the continent's elite outfits.

Once hailed a "force of nature" by journalist Rob Blanchette, Rice is truly one of the very best, and that's reflected through his £105m transfer to the Emirates from West Ham one year ago, making him one of the most expensive players in Premier League history.

As per Transfermarkt, his value still stands at a lofty £101m, placing him far ahead of his compatriot, Palmer.

A jack of all trades, the England international has long been regarded as one of the Premier League's finest deep-sitting midfielders but he's enjoyed a looser, more dynamic role under Arteta, ranking among the top 12% of positional peers in the division last term for goals scored, the top 16% for assists, the top 12% for pass completion, the top 11% for progressive passes and the top 20% for passes attempted per 90, as per FBref.

Rice might have a few years on Palmer but he's certainly a player in the same technical ballpark, and Chelsea must rue the day that he left their Cobham clutches.