The Senegal forward is a raw talent, but he is finally showing the world the player he can be if he fulfils his potential at Stamford Bridge
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Whenever a Chelsea match is being shown live in a London pub nowadays, there's often a certain phrase that echoes in a round when Nicolas Jackson first appears on screen: "Nicolassss…Jacksonnnnn."
It's meant to mimic the Senegalese's pronunciation of his own name during the Premier League's video guide to player phonetics released prior to the start of the 2024-25 season. Jackson's confident and charismatic take went viral, while marrying up neatly with the perception about him after a year in England.
A difficult 2023-24 campaign saw Chelsea overcome a tricky start to finish sixth, with their new centre-forward scoring 14 goals in 35 matches along the way. The Blues were a work in progress, and so was he at the age of 22.
Jackson was, nevertheless, derided for his wastefulness in front of goal and an innate ability to make the simple seem tough. Now, he's reversed that perception and is the best striker in all of London.
Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱Getty Images Sport'Sliding Doors' switch
Chelsea weren't actually the first English club to try and sign Jackson. Six months before his slated arrival at Stamford Bridge, Bournemouth reached a €23 million agreement with Villarreal and the deal was all set to go through – it even had Fabrizio Romano's 'here we go' seal of approval.
Alas, Jackson failed his medical and was sent back to Spain for the rest of the 2022-23 campaign. The Cherries, at that point not certain of Premier League safety, weren't sure exactly when he would be able to return from a hamstring strain and moved for Bristol City's Antoine Semenyo instead (which, as far as contingency plans go, wasn't actually the worst thing in the world).
That summer, with Jackson fit again and having ripped off a run of nine goals in the final eight La Liga games of the season, Chelsea took the plunge and agreed a fee in excess of his €35m release clause. In hindsight, perhaps the west Londoners should have received a bit more credit for not caving to media pressure and going all-in on another hugely expensive striker, given their long and strange run of high-profile No.9s flopping for them. That same pressure wouldn't be placed on Jackson's shoulders.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportInitial struggles
Jackson's first few months at Chelsea didn't go according to plan, however. He scored only two goals in his first nine Premier League games, with both coming against teams – Luton Town and Burnley – who would be relegated come the end of the season.
Frustration over the misfiring striker reached a boiling point during a 2-0 defeat at home to Brentford in October 2023, with a fan sat in the lower tier of Stamford Bridge, right next to the dugout, hurling abuse at Jackson. Head coach Mauricio Pochettino quickly sought to diffuse the situation and retorted: "Support the players!"
In his post-match press conference, Pochettino said: "It was a moment we all feel frustrated because after 40 minutes playing well and creating chances in that moment the energy of the stadium was a bit down. Because it was really calm [we could hear that] one fan said: 'Oh, wake up' and abuse a little bit. Nicolas was losing a bit of a focus and I was saying: 'Hey, come on, be focused here'.
"I repeat again, we need support and to stay behind the team and that’s it. I was very respectful and the fan was respectful… and the player took it in a bad way. It’s normal because the player wanted to score and do a good thing. Nothing more."
After that loss to the Bees, Chelsea found themselves 12th in the Premier League table. A trip to table-topping, undefeated Tottenham was up next.
Getty Images SportHat-trick of infamy
That trip across London to Spurs proved to be one of the strangest games in Premier League history. So much of the build-up was focused on Pochettino's emotional return to the club he had rebuilt in the modern day, how both sides of the divorce were trying to move on with their lives, and how Tottenham could actually announce themselves as title contenders under Ange Postecoglou while edging the Argentine closer to an early firing.
What followed was astonishing. Tottenham went a goal up early on through a deflected Dejan Kulusevski strike, and the slightest of offsides saw a second from Son Heung-min ruled out, with Chelsea on the verge of total collapse. Then it all changed.
A VAR check saw the visitors awarded a penalty and Cristian Romero sent off. Cole Palmer scored from 12 yards before Destiny Udogie also received his marching orders. Postecoglou's rebuttal was to order his makeshift defence to play an offside trap on the halfway line and squeeze the game as much as physically possible.
Predictably, this led to several Chelsea breaks, some of which were curtailed by late offside flags, but plenty of which were legitimate. Jackson missed again and again and again, thwarted on many occasions by goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario. Eventually, Spurs' resistance was broken and Chelsea ran out 4-1 winners, with Jackson grabbing three goals of his own. Yet it was regarded by some as an embarrassing hat-trick given he could have scored nearly double his final total.
Getty Images SportDisciplinary issues
Obviously, the main concern you would have about a striker is when they aren't scoring enough goals. Jackson, though, had another crease to his game that needed ironing out and is still semi-prevalent to this day.
Across his first six Premier League appearances, he accumulated the five bookings needed to incur a one-game suspension. All of these cautions were for dissent.
Pochettino had a stern warning for Jackson and his youthful team-mates: "We need to grow up like a team. A player like Nico is so young and is feeling the Premier League and is learning. He made the mistake. We feel disappointed because we are paying for too many situations like this."
Jackson ended the season with 10 bookings in total, managing to at least slow the rate at which he picked up his yellow cards. However, ill-discipline is still at the top of his list of weaknesses, having already picked up four so far this season.