Cole Palmer turned in another standout performance for Chelsea despite a 3-1 defeat to Bayern Munich on Wednesday night, but there was an injury concern for the England star late in the game.
The Blues fell short in Bavaria, with Trevoh Chalobah unfortunate to open the scoring with an own goal then Harry Kane doubled the home side’s lead.
Palmer brilliantly got one back for Chelsea, playing a one-two with Malo Gusto before expertly finishing past Manuel Neuer.
However, a Gusto error just after the hour-mark played in Kane who beautifully tucked the ball past Robert Sanchez.
Bayern were in control, although Palmer looked to have made things very interesting late on, before his neat finish was ruled out for offside.
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The 23-year-old played the full 90 minutes despite struggling with a groin injury recently and there was concern as he went down late in the game and appeared to be in pain, doubled over on the deck.
Losing their star man would be disastrous for the Blues, but manager Enzo Maresca allayed fears, saying: ‘Cole, I think, is okay. He said he was okay.’
Palmer was left frustrated that Chelsea are leaving Germany with nothing, feeling that it was a good display and just the odd lapse in concentration cost them.
‘Yeah I feel like we deserved more, to be honest,’ he told TNT Sports. ‘We started well, we had the chances to score but when you make mistakes at the highest level it’s always difficult to come back in any game.
‘Just a bit of lack of concentration and not managing the moments correctly. But I think we’ve shown we can play against one of the best teams in the competition. I think we deserved more.
‘The manager said to us before he knows we can go toe-to-toe and I think we showed that despite the result. We just need to kick on from here.’
Palmer rejected the idea that Chelsea are on a learning curve on their return to the Champions League, saying: ‘We’re not coming here to be a learning curve, I feel like tonight we’ve come here to compete and we want to do the best we can.’
Maresca agreed with the England man, picking him out alongside two standout performers, although the Italian reckons all his players did well.
‘[Robert] Sanchez, Malo Gusto was very good, Cole was very good. I think all the team were very good, it was a good performance from all of them,’ he said.
‘I think overall the performance was quite good. We started very well for the first 20 minutes, creating two or three clear chances.
‘Then we conceded a goal, and we can avoid that kind of goal, the game changed a little bit. But we were in the game, we scored a goal. We started second half creating chances, then after the third goal the game changed again.
‘We unfortunately conceded one more goal that killed the game a little bit, but even with that we were in the game and tried until the end, we scored another goal that unfortunately was offside.
‘I think we can learn a lot from this game. This kind of game required to play in the right way for 95 minutes, not just for part of the game I think we did that for part of the game very well but in some moments we were not good enough.’
