Championship defenders must wish some Middlesbrough fans got their way this summer and Chuba Akpom had left the Riverside Stadium — instead, the former Arsenal youngster is enjoying the season of his career.
He has 21 league goals and counting for Michael Carrick’s in-form side but in July it looked like his time in the northeast was coming to the end. Made to train with theunder-21s by Chris Wilder after returning late for pre-season, the 27-year-oldw as aware of the prevailing mood given his sparse returns since signing for the club in 2020.
LOW POINT
“My relationship with the fans has gone from zero to 100 — at the beginning of the season, I was with theunder-21s and I knew what was being said,” he tells The Athletic. “I’m not on the internet looking at what people are saying but the way the algorithm works, that stuff is coming to you. I saw the articles on Twitter — ‘Akpom deemed as out of favour, Akpom is not wanted’ — and I can see what the fans are saying — ‘Get rid of Akpom’ — too. “I was thinking I wouldn’t put a Middlesbrough shirt on again.
Then I played 30 minutes in pre-season against Marseille, the first game of the season against West Brom, then against QPR, and the fans started warming to me. Then I scored two against Sheffield United and the fans are like: ‘Wow! Chuba’s doing well.’
“They show me so much love now, I get messages every single day from adults and kids, from my next-door neighbours. All the love I’m receiving now, I’m really grateful for it.”
Akpom was fully aware his career was on a knife edge.
He developed a close bond with Uche Ikpeazu, another out-of-favour striker training with the under-21s in the summer, who left for Konyaspor in Turkey.
Akpom, on the other hand, has gone on to score 37.5 percent (21) of his 56 career league goals this term and it all started in written form.
TURNING POINT “I set targets when I was in the under-21s changing room — in a diary,” Akpom recalls.“
That’s when I started it. It was now or never — a breaking point. I’ve played hundreds of league games, and won promotions in England and titles in Greece so it wasn’t nice to be sent to theunder-21s.“I said wherever I go next, it needs to be my season. I used those experiences to motivate me and push harder.
”The in-form forward has kept the diaries going, where the word ‘goal’ must feature significantly. I do them after every three games,” he says. “I pick out how I performed, how many goalscoring opportunities I had, how many key passes I made, and whether I feel like I could have done better or not. It’s just four sentences and then the rating at the end.
“I’m harsh with my ratings. The gaffer’s really demanding, but he doesn’t need to be with me because I putthe utmost pressure on myself. That’s the only way I can keep improving.”
His daily routine became rigid in the summer. He would start by collecting his kit to bring to the under-21schanging room, going to the gym, training with the youngsters, doing extra running, more the gym, eating with the under-21s, and then heading home. To their surprise, himself and the two other players sent to the under-21s (Ikpeazu and Grant Hall) were given the weekends off.
FRIENDS IN NEED
Good friends with Ikpeazu, Akpom moved in to live with him temporarily and the pair spent those weekends doing extra drills. On certain weekends, he would travel back to London for one-to-one sessions with friend and individual coach Michael Pindy. “Instead of sitting down, I always wanted to be working,” Akpom, the Championship Player of the Month in December, says.
“Now when I speak to Uche, he’s like, ‘Chubs, this is crazy! We were sitting on my couch training with theunder-21s and now look at what you’re doing. You’re top scorer in The Championship’. He’s processed it, but I’m just getting on with it. ”A tweak to Akpom’s role has worked wonders too. Rather than playing as a pure No 9, the former England youth international has been deployed just behind the striker by Carrick and his staff. “It took them one session to switch me,” he says. “The day before a game we normally do team shape. I noticed I was behind the striker. I was looking around and then Jonathan Woodgate (Carrick’s assistant) walked up and joked, ‘Oh yeah, No 10? You could play there easily!’
“I knew I could play there because when I was an under-15 and under-16, I played as a No 10. I was a lot smaller and not as physical, but I was always good with my feet. I guess it was an instinctive decision from the gaffer.“
I speak to an independent coach (Louis Lancaster) individually. We have Zoom calls and he analyses my team-mates’ and l clips. “If I’ve got a game on Saturday he’ll show me clips of the defenders from that team — what their strengths and weaknesses are. I’m going into every game knowing how I can make the most of that.“ (It worked) against Wigan when I scored a hat-trick, I saw that the defenders don’t track the runners that go into the box. They switch off when the ball goes wide. If you check all my goals, I’ve been on the shoulder and they haven’t picked me up. That’s only because I’ve studied them.“ It’s about the timing. Also, if the defenders play a deeper line, I and wing-back Ryan (Giles) speaks about a different type of cross. If they play a high line, we speak about a more driven cross. It all varies on what type of line the defence plays. It goes to show homework pays off.”
GRASS TO GRACE
Akpom’s career was meandering before things clicked this season. Sent on six loans while at Arsenal, to Brentford, Coventry City, Nottingham Forest, Hull City, Brighton& Hove Albion, and Sint-Truiden in Belgium, he only managed 20+ games at one club — Hull City, where the goals never flowed.
“At the time my loans weren’t really thought out,” Akpom says. “Maybe if I was a young player now, the loans would have been. Which team should I go to? Do they suit the way I play? Which team plays similar to Arsenal so when I come back I can be ready to step in? “When I was 18, I went on loan straight away. It was a deal where I’d play for Coventry on a weekend, comeback to play in the Youth Cup and go back up. I was just going to get game time.”
Arsenal have become more organised in this department with Ben Knapper taking the role of loan manager in 2019. Now they have formed unofficial relationships with EFL clubs to whom they repeatedly send young players for their first loans, as well as having a handle on Ligue 1 for slightly older talents such as Folarin Balogun at Reims as well as William Saliba, Matteo Guendouzi and Nuno Tavares at Marseille.
Akpom made 12 Arsenal appearances, starting once against Nottingham Forest in the League Cup in2016-17.Olivier Giroud, Theo Walcott, Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were all ahead of him at one stage so Akpom decided to look for a new challenge despite having a year left on his contract in 2018.
“It takes a lot of faith,” he says. “If you don’t believe in yourself, it would be easy to completely falloff. You can go from being so highly regarded — ‘He’s going to play for Arsenal, England, etc’ — to rock bottom. “I wasn’t too harsh on myself. Ultimately, it wasn’t me putting these expectations on myself, it was other people. It never really got to me, but I wanted to get firing again.”
Adapted from The Athletic
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