After infuriating the Wolverhampton crowd by first condemning the city on social media and then scoring a second-half hat-trick for Chelsea in their 6-2 win over Wolves, Noni Madueke celebrated his first treble for the first team and publicly apologised.

Madueke’s social media post – quickly deleted – read: “This place is shit”, and on Sunday he said: “I just want to apologise to anyone I may have offended. It’s just human error, an accident. It wasn’t meant to come out on my social media like this. I’m sure Wolverhampton is a nice city and I’m sorry.”

He was booed throughout the match at Molineux, but in the second half, just over 14 minutes, he scored three times, each time assisted by Cole Palmer. “He’s cold and I’m fire, so it goes well together,” Madueke said of Palmer. He also praised his new manager, Enzo Maresca, saying: “He’s crazy about his approach, the little details, you can see that.”

Maresca, in turn, praised Palmer, who played a key role in all six of Chelsea’s goals. “He is a special player, a special man and a special person,” Maresca said, after his first win as Chelsea manager.

In contrast, Mykhailo Mudryk, who was selected ahead of new signing Pedro Neto, was replaced at half-time with Raheem Sterling being banned and put up for sale. His new manager said: “He worked very hard without the ball and that was very good. But in terms of the ball I expect a bit more quality from Misha.”

Neto came on at half-time and set up Chelsea’s final goal, scored by João Félix, the latest addition to a bloated squad. Maresca, meanwhile, outlined the main objectives set by the club’s hierarchy. “They simply asked me to improve the players, improve the team, and also at this moment the objective is to solve the economic problem in terms of why we need to sell players and do some things.”

The Italian asked for time to deliver success. “You need a process. You can’t just compete with these kinds of teams. I’ve said it many times; the difference between us and Arsenal and City is that City have had the same manager for eight or nine years at the moment and Arsenal have had the same manager for five years. Chelsea have had the same manager for less than two months.”

Wolves manager Gary O’Neil lamented a disastrous second-half defensive performance. “We helped Chelsea a lot so there’s still a lot I need to fix,” he said.

“It was a difficult start for us, playing against Arsenal and Chelsea. We have a lot of things to sort out and when we play against teams that are more like ourselves, we cause them a lot of problems.”