Why Cole Palmer should beat Phil Foden to the Footballer of the Year award

Sometimes, amid the waves of data and analysis which seem to drown contemporary football, you wonder whether there is still space for the genuinely unexpected. The player who arrives out of a clear blue sky and delivers to a level no-one foresaw.

It was like that with George Best, called up to the Manchester United first team for a home match with West Bromwich Albion 61 years ago, and such a bag of nerves that Matt Busby listed him as ‘reserve’, to preserve him from stage fright, when scrawling out the team-sheet in ballpoint.

The then 17-year-old was convinced that this selection, in the days before substitutes were used, must be some kind of punishment. He made his debut, of course – and so invincibly that Busby later wondered aloud whether what he observed had been a dream. A manager never really knows until the white line is crossed and the first whistle blown.

No-one is comparing Cole Palmer with that vast talent but the surprise component is much the same. The player last week described by Pep Guardiola as ‘shy’ has provided this season’s supreme iridescence in ways which transcend the grey data.

Numbers tell us that Palmer’s 29 goal/assists are bettered by only Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins. That his delivery of a goal or assist every 75 minutes is best in the division. That he has been involved in 46 per cent of his side’s Premier League goals - more than any other player.

But the individual moments soar above all that. The close control and 40-yard diagonal pass picking out Mykhailo Mudryk from the touchline at Villa Park last week. The forthright claiming of the ball to despatch his fourth goal against Everton from the spot, where he not missed in 13. The ball rolled through a forest of legs, into the net, at Old