Garnacho happy to have taken ‘a step forward’ by swapping United for Chelsea

Alejandro Garnacho says he has no regrets about the manner of his departure from Manchester United and that it was a straightforward decision to “take a step forward” by joining Chelsea last summer.

It has been a steady, rather than sparkling, first few months for Garnacho since he swapped Old Trafford for Stamford Bridge at the end of August. His relationship with Ruben Amorim had collapsed by the end of his five-year stint at United and he was banished from their squad in pre-season. Amorim felt he had failed to follow tactical instructions and, before the transfer was completed, said he sensed Garnacho wanted “a different thing with different leadership”.

Speaking the evening before Chelsea’s Champions League match at Atalanta, Garnacho was asked whether he harboured any regrets at all about the way things had ended. “No,” was the extent of his response, a word subsequently repeated when questioned on whether he felt any sadness.

Garnacho was keener to elaborate on his bond with Enzo Maresca, who has worked intensively on the Argentinian’s positioning off the ball. “Sometimes in life you have to change things to take a step forward or improve as a player,” he said. “I think it was the right moment and the right club, so it was an easy decision. I came here to play my football and show people the player I am.

“The most important thing is confidence. [Maresca] speaks with me every week and I think we are going to get better, me as a player and the team together, with time. We started the season three months ago so it’s building confidence between the manager and the player.”

Chelsea will hope Garnacho, who scored in their last Champions League away assignment at Qarabag, is at his scintillating best against an Atalanta side that are below them only on goal difference in the sprawling league phase table. Maresca’s team sit seventh and the jeopardy in this fixture, such as it is, lies in trying to avoid a scramble out of the playoff spots after Christmas. It is their third consecutive match on the road after the defeat at Leeds and draw at Bournemouth.

Maresca spoke fulsomely of Atalanta’s work as a reference point for Italian football under their former manager Gian Piero Gasperini. They are now led by Raffaele Palladino, a Gasperini protege with whom Maresca crossed paths briefly as a player at Juventus, and he warned that his players would not lack company in the attractively renovated New Balance Arena.

“Now many teams [in Italy] try to do something similar to what Atalanta has done in the last years with Gasperini,” Maresca said. “So you can see most of the teams played five at the back, most of the teams tried to play man-to-man everywhere. If you go to the toilet, they follow you everywhere.”

A heavily rotated lineup appears inevitable and will not involve Cole Palmer, who returned from an injury layoff of more than two months on Saturday but was left in London in order to manage his workload. Nor will it include Liam Delap, whose injury-plagued season worsened when he picked up a shoulder injury at Bournemouth. Maresca said Delap had not sustained a fracture but did not give a timeframe for his comeback.

Two and a half years ago the outcast Raheem Sterling scored an 11-minute hat-trick against Atalanta for Manchester City. Maresca was asked whether Sterling, who has not played for Chelsea since May 2024, has any route back into his thoughts. “In terms of Raheem it’s the same thing I said about Axel [Disasi], they are Chelsea players,” he said. “Now also we are in December, January is coming so anything can happen with him.”