Ex Chelsea man reveals he never wanted to sign for us anyway!

Remember Yuri Zhirkov? The man with a big reputation as one of the upcoming stars of European football joined Chelsea for a fee of around £18m in 2009 and being honest, did little really to cement his place in the team or force his way in. I think we could realistically, count on one hand the amount of games he played well in for Chelsea.

Well, it seems that there was a reason for all this, he actually wanted to sign for Bayern Munich and NOT Chelsea as he reveals himself on Anzhi's official website (the club he has signed for now). He said:

"Then I had offers from both Chelsea and Bayern, and I wanted Bayern because [former CSKA team mate and friend] Ivica Olic was already playing for Bayern.

In general I like Germany more than England - but in the end I was sold to Chelsea.

Psychologically I also feel much better in Russia because at Chelsea I had problems. For example, I would play 10 matches in a row, then Lampard would return from an injury and right away I would find myself seating on the bench.

If you played well or badly it made no difference. It's not that I was offended but I just wanted to know why this was happening."

(Source)
The problem Zhirkov had was that he had Ashley Cole in front of him at left back and Florent Malouda on the left wing and Malouda's form had already seen off the likes of Joe Cole because he was playing really well.

I can understand his frustrations with not playing but let's face it, he doesn't play the same position as Frank Lampard and if we had a choice back then in 2010 (our double winning season) and last season, we would have picked Lampard over Zhirkov anyway.

The strange thing is, everyone has a choice if they want to make the move when a club accepts an offer. I am certain they can either say yes or no when they are informed of what has happened so why didn't he say "No, I want to move to Germany"?.

You have to hold your hands up and say fair play for taking up the challenge of coming to England to play here, it's just a shame that for the most part, you never really looked like you wanted to be here and now we know why!

KTBFFH

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