Christopher Nkunku has laid responsibility for an underwhelming spell at Chelsea at the feet of managerial selection as he completed a permanent move to AC Milan worth up to \u20ac42 million this summer. After flirting with a January exit and Bayern Munich, the versatile forward arrived at the San Siro and sought to set the record straight.<\/p>\n
His time at Chelsea began with misfortune. During his first summer at the club he \u201cgot injured straight away and was out for five months, and upon my return I had a relapse,\u201d the Frenchman explained shortly after signing for Milan. That disrupted debut campaign saw him make just two Premier League starts.<\/p>\n
By the start of the 2024\u201325 campaign Nkunku had a clean bill of health, coinciding with Enzo Maresca\u2019s appointment as Chelsea manager. Nkunku insisted he prepared fully: \u201cIn my second year, I worked hard and did everything I could to be ready,\u201d and then added, \u201cand the coach made his choices.\u201d Those choices limited his opportunities. He started just three Premier League games before being picked to face Brighton & Hove Albion on Valentine\u2019s Day, a match Chelsea lost 3\u20130.<\/p>\n
Injuries to other forwards early in the year obliged Maresca to call on Nkunku for extended minutes, but the forward was unable to convert those rare starts into sustained form. Over the 2024\u201325 campaign Nkunku directly contributed to five Premier League goals, four of which came against Southampton, a side that endured the second-worst campaign in the competition\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
The combination of early injury, interrupted recovery and selection decisions defined Nkunku\u2019s time at Chelsea. His transfer to AC Milan represents a fresh start after a spell in which opportunity and circumstance failed to align for a player who had once been linked with moves away mid-season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nkunku blamed Enzo Maresca’s selections after injuries, then completed a \u20ac42m move to Milan. (Milan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2541,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[597,934],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-christopher-nkunku","tag-enzo-maresca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}