Striker play can be over complicated, but it can also be boiled down to one thing – goals per 90 minutes. How often do you score for every minute you play.
If you consider potential Chelsea signing Nicolas Jackson by that metric, he’s the third best striker in La Liga last season. His flurry of goals to close the season pushed him to a score of 0.68 goals per 90 minutes for Villareal.
It was certainly a powerful run of form to end the season, but he doesn’t have a long pedigree of form. In fact last season he didn’t even make a league start for the Yellow Submarine.
So it was a hot streak rather even than a hot season, and Chelsea are banking on him carrying it on now. That is certainly esteemed company – he comes in just behind Karim Benzema and Roberto Lewandowski and ahead of Alvaro Morata and Borja Iglesias.
Some will be worried we’re buying him off the back of just one good patch – but if you want to get top players cheap you’ve got to move fast and trust your scouts Jackson has the raw materials, and it was maybe just that finally playing regularly in a well drilled team was what caused him to start scoring, meaning he could replicate that form long term in good teams.
He wouldn’t have to keep matching Benzema and Lewandowski to be a big upgrade on what we had this season.
