Chelsea fans, it's time to face a tough reality: Cole Palmer's struggles are no longer a blip—they've become a full-blown trend. The attacking star, once the Blues' shining light, has now been underperforming for over a year, and the numbers paint a worrying picture.

Palmer's decline reached a new low yesterday when he missed a penalty in Chelsea's defeat, looking every bit like a player who has lost his edge. Both mentally and physically, he's a shadow of the talent who took the Premier League by storm. For a while, injuries were the easy excuse, but that narrative ignores a longer, more concerning slide. He didn't turn bad overnight—after an electrifying 18 months, he had an average six months, and the last few weeks have been truly dreadful.

The stats tell the story. As highlighted by the Sun's Lloyd Canfield, Palmer racked up 37 goals and 21 assists in his first 66 games for Chelsea—a staggering 58 goal involvements. That run carried him through Mauricio Pochettino's season and into Enzo Maresca's tenure. But in the 61 games since? Just 16 goals and 10 assists, totaling 26 G/A. That's less than half his previous output, a drop-off that's as stark as it is alarming.

You can almost pinpoint the exact halfway mark of his Chelsea career as the moment things went wrong. Palmer looks completely broken, and the big question now is: what comes next? Caretaker manager Calum McFarlane continues to shield his players from criticism, but fans are left wondering why. For a team and a player once riding high, this is a critical crossroads—and the clock is ticking on a revival.