How is ex-Middlesbrough striker Chuba Akpom getting on? | OneFootball

The Boro striker sealed a move to Ajax in the summer of 2023

The 2022/23 Championship season saw Chuba Akpom rise to the fore, as the Middlesbrough striker netted 28 times for the Teessiders en route to the second tier playoffs.

Everything the frontman seemed to touch turned into goals during his purple patch at The Riverside, as he came back to the English game with a vengeance after spending the previous season with PAOK in Greece.

With Boro missing out on promotion to the Premier League after playoff semi-final defeat to Coventry City that year, the north-east outfit were resigned to losing their star man, with Dutch giants Ajax swooping to make him theirs last summer.

The Eredivisie outfit forked out a reported €12.3 million to make him theirs, but has he been worth that princely sum? Here we take a look at just how he has been doing since making the move to the Netherlands.

Chuba Akpom struggles for game time in struggling Ajax side

In truth, Akpom walked straight into a cauldron of despair when he made the move to the Amsterdam Arena, with the club in the midst of a downward spiral which saw them at their lowest ebb in a generation.

With just two wins in their first nine matches of the season, the 1992 UEFA Cup winners were in a state of turmoil, with supporters visually showing their displeasure by forcing their clash with Feyenoord to be abandoned in September.

The former Boro striker was hardly given the chance to impress in his new surroundings, before he caught fire at the start of November, with eight goals in nine games helping his side rediscover some form.

While the frontman still seems to have that same predatory instinct when given a sight of goal, just eight starts has limited those opportunities in domestic competition, although a return of 1.20 goal contributions per 90 in the 23/24 campaign shows he is making an impact when given game time.

It has been a similar story at the start of the current campaign, with a slow start preceding a dramatic return to form on the European stage, with a hat-trick against Polish outfit Jagiellonia Białystok stealing the headlines.

While Akpom can only perform when given the opportunity, the move to the crisis-hit side could be one he regrets, with the forward hinting at a potential move away from the club over the summer.

"To be honest, I don't know what the situation is exactly," he told Dutch publication NOS. "What I have learned in my career is to just keep focusing on football.

“If you start thinking about things off the pitch, you get distracted. So I don't know if I will be here next week or at the end of the transfer window.

“But every day I come to the club, I train as if I will stay here this season.

"I want to be part of a team that needs me. I don't think I can sit on the bench as a second striker for another year.

“If I get more involved in the games this year, then I'll be happy to stay here. If that's not the case, then maybe it's time to look elsewhere. We'll see.

"I tried to be important in the minutes I got. That's the only thing I could do, stay professional and make the best of it. I'm happy with that. I would very much like to continue working under this new coach."