Mauricio Pochettino has heaped praise on Nicolas Jackson following his performance against Newcastle last night.
Jackson scored his 12th goal of the season to open the scoring as the Blues recorded a much needed 3-2 win to keep alive their chances of qualifying for European football next season.
The 22 year old showed great improvisation to cleverly flick Cole Palmer’s shot into the back of the net to give Chelsea an early lead.
The Senegalese international has come under a lot of criticism during his first season in England particularly for his finishing but it’s looking like it’s going to be a strong debut campaign for the former Villareal man.
Pochettino believes that Jackson is showing improvement each week and singled out his work rate.
The Argentine was asked in his post match press conference if he felt Jackson was improving and in quotes picked up by Football London said: “Yes, of course. Of course, we need to understand the player when they are young and arrive from out of England, they need to know first the Premier League.”
“They also need to know their teammates to perform. But he is performing really well.”
“The effort is always there, how he presses, the work rate is massive. Of course, he has the quality. With more games, with experience, he is going to be more calm in front of the goal and he is going to be more clinical.”
“We think he has the capacity but we need to keep believing that he can be the player, the striker, the offensive player that can score for Chelsea too many goals, a lot of goals.”
If only the Chelsea fan base would adopt Poch’s growth mindset! They seem only to see Jackson’s misses, with little to no appreciation for his work rate or the elite number of chances he creates. Even with the misses, FBref has him rated in the 91st percentile in non-penalty goals for players in his position. For a player of his age and relative inexperience playing his first season in the EPL, that’s a truly praiseworthy accomplishment. It’s long past time the supporters dropped this incessant negativity toward Jackson and started to give him his due!