With little breathing space between themselves and the relegation zone, Everton must hope their appeal against a second points deduction of the season proves to be successful. On this evidence, they cannot be relied on to pull themselves out of trouble on the pitch.
Signed in a deal worth £40 million, plus £2.5 million in add-ons, Palmer must already be worth more than the hotels Chelsea sold back to themselves for £75 million.
His perfect hat-trick, with his left foot, head and right foot, came within half-an-hour against Everton and meant he became the first Chelsea player to score in seven successive Premier League home games.
It was also his second successive treble at Stamford Bridge after Palmer had dramatically won Chelsea the game against Manchester United.
Pochettino has already coached his fair share of young stars and he knows he’s got one in the form of 21-year-old Palmer, who will look to show his former club Manchester City exactly what they are missing in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final at Wembley.
England assistant-manager Steve Holland was at Stamford Bridge on Monday night and he and Gareth Southgate are going to find it difficult to leave Palmer out of their squad for the European Championships.
Palmer will no doubt think he should have had four goals inside the opening half-an-hour, as he actually missed his easiest chance of the first half. But the three goals he did score in the opening 45 minutes had a bit of everything.
The first, in the 13th minute, came after Palmer had nutmegged Jarrad Branthwaite and swapped passes with Jackson. There was still a lot to do to beat England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, but the Chelsea midfielder curled a brilliant left-foot shot into the bottom corner of the net.
Palmer seemed certain to get his second minutes later, when Madueke crossed from the left, but this time he got in front of the ball and it hit him on the back and rebounded away from danger rather than into the net.
Nobody was quite sure how Palmer had missed, but he made no mistake in the 18th minute, when he doubled his tally and Chelsea’s advantage.
Conor Gallagher did brilliantly to keep the ball alive and it was eventually worked to Jackson, whose shot was saved by Pickford and Palmer was alert to head the rebound into the net.
With over 70 minutes of the game remaining, it seemed a certainty that Palmer would complete his hat-trick and he did so shortly before the 30-minute mark – thanks in part to a terrible mistake from Pickford.
Palmer certainly does not need any favours to get on the scoresheet right now, but he got one when Pickford passed the ball into his path when trying to find Amadou Onana.
Pickford immediately raced back towards his own goal, but Palmer lobbed a beautiful right-foot shot from around 35 yards over the goalkeeper and into the net.
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