Did Chelsea chaos provide a clue to unsettling City's relentless control?

Perhaps what was most striking in Chelsea’s 4-4 draw with Manchester City on Sunday was how one team played entirely to type, and one team didn’t. That’s a situation that should give hope not only to Chelsea but to the rest of the league: perhaps this iteration of City is not quite so relentless and remorseless as had been thought. They go into the international break only a point clear of Arsenal and Liverpool, whom they face in the first game back Chelsea are unpredictable, occasionally brilliant, skittish and chaotic, and have in Cole Palmer a player who seems as yet not to have been ground down by the game, who regards structures and expectations and pressure with an anarchic insolence. A vital injury-time penalty against the club he left in August for a player who says he doesn’t really practise penalties? No problem, the ball dispatched calmly into the top corner.

His behaviour when City were then given a dangerous free-kick – awarded for a crude lunge by Raheem Sterling, a player who, it’s fair to say, did not deal with a game against his former club with quite such sang-froid – also seemed telling. As City players clustered over the ball discussing plans, Palmer stuck his head into the huddle, presumably hoping they would forget he was no longer one of them. And it might have worked, had Erling Haaland not been late to the gathering and noticed the darker blue of his shirt.

The Norwegian’s expression as he dragged Palmer away was hard to read, but given the apparently warm chat the pair had had as they waited for kick-off after the penalty, it was probably closer to a grin than a snarl. Either way, the point is that Palmer was unfazed enough in the maelstrom to pull off an act of mischief that was less espionage