Legendary Liverpool and England forward John Barnes believes that young French star Christopher Nkunku’s transfer to Chelsea may prove to be a huge mistake.
On Saturday, it was widely reported that Chelsea had concluded a deal with RB Leipzig which would see Nkunku move to Stamford Bridge next summer for around £63million.
Nkunku has scored 64 goals and made 51 assists in 159 appearances for the Bundesliga side since 2019.
His impressive performance earned him a spot in France’s squad for this year’s World Cup in Qatar, but had to withdraw on the eve of the tournament after he was injured by teammate Eduardo Camavinga in training.
Liverpool, Manchester United and former club PSG were interested in the 25-year-old, but it was Chelsea who were always most closely linked, with reports suggesting that the Blues agreed to pay £10m over the player’s release clause in order to guarantee the signing.
While landing such an incredible centre-forward should be exciting news for Chelsea fans, Barnes has erred on the side of caution
The 1986 and 1990 World Cup star is not sure that Nkunku and Chelsea are best suited for each other at the moment.
“He [Nkunku] is young but still quite experienced. He is very quick and has been very good for Leipzig for a long period of time,” Barnes told BonusCodeBets.
“But it’s tough for younger players to come into a club like Chelsea as they are quite unstable in terms of changing their managers.
“He has great potential but Chelsea haven’t been that great the last six months and I would hate to see a young talented player go to a club that is not structured at the moment.
‘If he goes to Chelsea they should have patience with him and I don’t think they have that with young players.”
Chelsea are currently eighth in the Premier League, eight points off the top four.
While it seems that they are attempting to create more of a long-term project, in contrary to Roman Abramovich’s revolving door of managers, Chelsea do have a bad reputation of discarding youngsters who go on to be world-class players.
A few example of such are Kevin De Bruyne, Mohamed Salah and Romelu Lukaku.
