Christopher Nkunku’s start to life at AC Milan has certainly not been great. In fact, the Frenchman’s start could be classed as much worse.
Moving to a new league is never easy, especially when the summer has been filled with problems at your old club. So we cannot be too harsh regarding Nkunku. However, it is difficult to really be positive about the attacker.
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He has scored once in the Coppa Italia, and past that, he has been pretty underwhelming. Moments have been few and far between, and impacts on the game have been equally limited. So, it is difficult to understand the price that Milan paid.
Vitiello’s criticism
Of course, there is a player in there. However, finding and unleashing that talent has proved to be tough thus far, and Antonio Vitiello voiced his discontent about the situation for MilanNews this afternoon.
“If this is the player, it’s pointless. He definitely needs to wake up. The first half was horrible, practically worthless. He improved in the second half, fighting with better form, but not even a single goal.
“Yet, we’re talking about a player who cost 40 million, and it’s December 9th, and he still hasn’t scored in Serie A. They say you need to give new players time to adapt, and that’s all true, but when you’re at Milan and you never score, it’s starting to become a serious problem.”
As he says, it takes time, but worries cannot be deemed unfair at this point.
I agree, it was his best game and he did bad. The positive is that he wasn’t a ghost, he tried to do something, get the ball, whatever.
But I’ve said it 20 times already. There is a reason why Bayern Munich refused to even take him on loan with obligation to buy and only offered the one with option to buy…Milan on the other hand is super rich compared to Bayern so we can just throw money and pray it works…
It’s easier for Bayern to say “no” because they can easily find another player with the same qualities and less injuries.
Milan has no money and no Champions League, so if they want a next level type of player, they need to take risks like with Nkunku. It might pay off, and we have a player we’d normaly never have been in the running for otherwise…
What do you mean? Anyone with 40M€ was in the running. How would Milan never be in the running for Nkunku who was basically injured for 2 years and did nothing? Next level player? If Torino paid 40M he’d be there.
Anyway, that is not the part I’m curious about, but you are telling me that a club with less money should take more risks and pay high fees that someone else doesn’t want to pay? Milan could have offered loan with option to buy and waited until the last hour for them to accept. If not there were Serie A players for half the money that would do better.
The point is Nkunku has not been a “next level” type of player. We cannot look back at his time in Germany and spend the money now, the timing is totally different. His form back in the days is irrelevant to today’s evaluation. Well done Moncada on using outdated data for this algorithms.
The second Torino goal was a horrid showing, and he also made numerous of other mistakes. However, some of his movements in the second half created space for Pulisic and I thought was quite helpful. Yes, too soft most of the time. Yes, there is a lack of confidence, but there might be a very good player in there. My question is how we are going to use him in this system?
Maybe he works well with Pulisic, Rabiot and RLC on the pitch I don’t know, I just know he is no target man up front.
“Might be” isn’t good enough and he isn’t Ronaldinho to adapt the whole teams tactics to him. I mean don’t we have 2 players that weren’t playing as center forwards /strikers before this season delivering goals? That is what Nkunku also needs to do or he’ll be ex-Milan player soon.
I thought he played better as something akin to a no9 in the second half, might not have been the most effective but was in the right places. And right now we need any forward willing to fight for a ball!
IMO people need to get off his back, ignore his price tag (not his fault) and cheer him on for a bit. At the moment, like it or not, he’s a necessity.
He did something, which compared to all the previous games is better. Still really bad. I don’t think being offside in that obvious situation can be called that he was in the right places. But at least he tried.
This is Milan, where the fans want instant result, we are very impatient at Milan, he is already at disadvantage for who he is, but he need to do more and delivers or else he is out.
We are VERY VERY impatient at Milan.
That said,he has been awful. I want him to succeed but everytime he goes down as easily as he often does, and makes that face that he often makes, I swear I wanna give him something to cry about.
When the lack of confidence makes him turn away from goal, I wanna get in his face and ask him- very impolitely- what has him so scared?!
I agree. I thought he was better in the second half. I think it is difficult to play with Leão as there is less team play.
Agree.
Leao trying to do everything on his own is part of the problem.
I commented last week that it seems like he was afraid of the ball, fortunately he was more willing to at least attempt to get possession. Still too weak, I understand he’s still building fitness and all that from his horrible injury luck but man he’s soft for a a forward.
The positive I will say is his movement towards the end of the game improved. Rewatch Pulisic’s last goal – Nkunku did well dragging the defender to the near post with him freeing space in the middle for Pulisic to get the winner. It’s not much but it’s something
bayern start their 17 year old in the champions league. we sold ours to lecce, so we could buy this jabroni. any sporting director with some sense would’ve kept camarda…
We can sell Nkunku with maximum 15-20 millions at best now. Very bad deal, it was a huge risky gambling , I cannot believe we pay 40 millions for him whiteout a loan for a season. We must wait until summer maybe he will play better till then but I’m pessimistic about this.
He can wake up 😂 He is mistake like Gimenez and that is. We need cash and buy great attacker and not trash like this 2.
Heeeej you play for Milan and cant score 😂😂
Motiv not problem,games and time not problem,but
problem is this guys cant play for this club they just not good.
Part of the problem last night was Leao didn’t interact well with Nkunku. It was similar with Leao and RLC v Lazio in the Coppa.
E.g. the moment that Leao got hurt. Nkunku was creating a nice give and go triangle where he was running into the box to receive and shoot from a good area. Instead Leao receives the ball and shoots himself from well outside the box. Misses the target and pulls a muscle.
Nkunku was much better interacting with Pulisic and RLC in the second half.
I’m looking forward to seeing he and Pulisic start together v Lazio.
Everyone should leave Nkunku alone and be positive because this is a player who just came back from injury and never played moreover he’s playing in a new league. He has to play more to adapt and improve.
How do you expect unused player to score 3 goals which would have made you guys happy? He needs more playing time to improve and one thing you Milan Fans have to realize is that these writers always see Milan red flags but blind to other big clubs. Nkunku is very good and will score goals
Leao had the same problem when he joined new but now he’s the best in Seria A
He will get another shot against Sassuolo during the weekend, let’s see if he can build on that little better than awful Torino performance
I’m actually surprised that no one has invoked the Morata signing as a comparison to Nikunku. If memory serves me, we signed Morata, he didn’t score, he didn’t contribute and he was gone in the January Mercato. I think that’s the precedent. Maybe the injury gives him a little more latitude with the club, but in the end, the results (so far) aren’t any different.
Hard to gauge Milan’s rationale here.
On one hand they take a proven goal scorer in Dutch League and bring him in, and he struggles…
On the other hand they take a gamble on Frenchie and he too struggles…
And it’s not like these were cheap gambles… 37 mil and 40 mil is not pocket change. I don’t know how the scouting plays out but it’s a mystery.
With the 80M€ they could have gotten something concrete but no…
The management don’t even know what they want, they have 3 dangerous striker that can fit the current coach pattern and they let they leave, Tammy, Lucas, Morata colombo, pick one of this to stand as vice of Gemenez. All they do is to bring in Nukuku for outrageous amount of money.
Even Camarda could/would have done a better job!
It seems nowadays players are coming to Milan, either get injured easily, out for long period of time and/or want to do the ‘Origi’ stunt..
Guys! Remember CDK? Look at him now! We need to be more patient with new and younger players.