Alan Shearer shows true colours as he issues decisive Cole Palmer verdict

Alan Shearer made a point of hailing attitude after the silky magician returned to form against

Before the clash against the champions, Palmer had not found the net in 18 matches for side. Despite his title winners, it looked like his efforts were not going to be rewarded on the scoresheet again.

But when was brought down in the box by Jarell Quansah in the final seconds of the game, Palmer stepped up and swiped a low penalty into the bottom corner to end his drought. After the match, Palmer let his emotions run free in his interview, , while talking about "social media trolls" that were targeting him during his dry patch.

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Shearer hailed Palmer's performance, attitude and interview shortly after full-time. While speaking on , Micah Richards began the conversation about Palmer by saying: "The standout player was Cole Palmer. When Cole Palmer plays well, Chelsea win. It’s as simple as that.

"Everyone can play well in that team and you can have a clean sheet or whatever, but the difference is Cole Palmer. When he is on it, they are a different animal when he plays well.”

Shearer replied: "I loved his attitude by the way. I was sitting in my mate’s bar, Harry’s bar, in Newcastle. His interview came on, and he said, 'I don’t care what anyone says, they are all entitled to their opinion.'

"I thought, 'Yeah.' We all go through tough periods in our career and it’s just how you get through them. You’ve just got to get through them to get to the other end. I thought his interview was brilliant, I really thought ‘Yeah, good on you man!’

"Social media is a really tough and hard place as we know. It’s maybe not the best of places when you are going through hard times. I thought for him to come out and say what he did, I thought his interview was brilliant.”

As well as scoring the penalty, Palmer was instrumental in Chelsea's first two goals, creating space in the middle of the park before feeding a pass for Pedro Neto, whose cross for Enzo Fernandez led to the opener. In the second half, Palmer drove past Kostas Tsimikas and delivered a low cross, which created havoc and led to Virgil van Dijk kicking the ball at Quansah, who could not stop himself from deflecting it into his own net.

Despite his dry spell, Palmer still boasts 15 Premier League goals and nine assists in 34 matches. Chelsea boss Maresca insisted he was always confident that his star man would find his best form again.

The Italian said: "We saw Cole day by day at the training ground and he’s exactly the same way, scoring goals, happy. For sure when he doesn’t score goals he’s not happy and the reason why is he wants to help the team and the club reach something important.

"He’s happy for sure because he scored and we won but I didn’t see him different from three months ago. He scored 14 goals in [the first] 20 Premier League games.”