Michy Batchuayi's move to Besiktas.

Photo by Serhat Cagdas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The history of Michy Batshuayi is an interesting one to look at since he first joined Chelsea back in 2016 after tearing up the Ligue 1 with Marseille, after scoring 17 goals in 32 appearances, with a further 9 assists.

Having then moved to England, the talent was so evident to see but the minutes given to him by a succession of different managers was not as his career never really took off due to not being given a run of games, although his scoring rate for someone that only ever came off the bench was still largely impressive.

This went on for around a season and a half, until the January transfer window came, and he was sent out on loan to German club Borussia Dortmund, where he proved the quality that he has and in the 2nd half of that season grabbed 9 goals in 13 appearances, including 2 in the Champions League.

Again though, when the next season turned up, his parent club decided to send him out on loan twice in a year, first at Valencia and then finishing off in London again, but with Crystal Palace. This year continued the disappointment as even when he found play time, the goals were then not following along with it.

The next season he stayed at Chelsea and ended up playing in 20 games in all competitions, but only 1 he started in, subsequently meaning he only managed to score 2 goals in that time.

Now looking last season, 2020/21, where he earned a move back to Selhurst Park to play for Crystal Palace once again but similarly to the season before, of the games that he did feature in, only a handful were ones where he was named in the starting eleven, and so then only got another 2 goals that season.

On to where Michy’s career has taken to this year. Batshuayi decided to take the opportunity to move to a club not is the typical ‘Big 5’ leagues in Europe. Instead, he chose to move to Turkish Giants Besiktas where he has finally found good form. As of now, so far this this season he has played 11 games in the Turkish Süper Lig, and 4 in the Champions League, and has racked up 6 goals and 2 additional assists combined, so starting to show what he is capable of with his feet at a relatively high level of football, and on a consistent basis.

The issue with this though is that he is now 28 years old. While that is not really old by any stretch of the imagination, the 5 years since his breakthrough season at Marseille were the core years at where he should have been developing his game much more and playing at the highest level but unfortunately that has not worked out for him so that didn’t happen. Hopefully though Batshuayi can now focus on his football, with nothing like injuries stopping him from scoring goals, and maybe earn himself a nice move to a team where he can really hit his prime, and make Chelsea wonder why they never gave him the proper game time.