Nicolas Jackson ended last night with a hattrick and his reaction after the game was rather interesting, as he pointed to the ways in which Tottenham goalkeeper Guglielmo Vicario’s high stating position and speed meant he was able to sweep up so effectively.
“I have been dreaming of this since I was young and I made it come true,” said Jackson in quotes picked up by the Chelsea official website.
“I’m very happy. It is my first hat-trick. It was an intense game. We play football for these kinds of games.
“I was running behind the defence. They had it well organised. Their goalkeeper surprised me, he is quick! Maybe we could have scored three more, he helped them a lot, but we had the players to provide for us at the right time. We did that and scored four goals.”
It was a recurrent theme of a second half that threatened to be the most frustrating we’ve ever seen. It was all set up so nicely – Chelsea were two men up and Spurs were camped on the halfway line.
All Jackson had to do was time his run correctly, and all his teammates had to do was weight the passes to him correctly.
That proved difficult – Jackson was caught offside several times, and even worse there were a host of passes to him which were overhit and saw Vicario able to sprint forward and clear.
We cracked the code in the end, but my god it was stressful.
