Nicolas Jackson has become something of a lightning rod for Chelsea fans over the course of this season. Debate has gone one way and then the other. Some are convinced he’s got everything he needs and is just a few pieces short of being a top striker, others are frustrated beyond belief with what they’ve see and think he’ll never have the goalscoring touch required to lead the line for us.
Yesterday was a great example, and was as divisive a game as we’ve seen from Jackson. He had the chances to get us into the FA Cup final, but a combination of bad technique and low confidence cost us. He took a large chunk of the blame, from Chelsea fans and non-Chelsea fans alike.
The club’s view
But what do the club think? According to Fabrizio Romano, they’re pleased with the course of this move. After signing him for €37m, they always knew it was going to be a project, and so far they like what they see:
“Nicolas Jackson is being made a bit of a scapegoat after missing some big chances, but it’s his first season, coming from Villarreal, and he’s still very young. We need to understand that players are not robots, it’s been a difficult season for Chelsea but Jackson scored an important number of goals and club believes he has an important potential,” Romano explained in his column for Caught Offside,
“They will give him time for sure, they are still very happy with a signing they completed for a normal fee.”
The problem is that Chelsea fans don’t want to have players who are good relative to their fee, they want players who are good, full stop. They want strikers who will score goals, otherwise we’re going to continue to have games like we’ve had all season, where missed chances cost us matches.
If you dont have anything to say, say nothing. Send him on loan, and get the other lazy players to step up, or are they allowed a couple more years to gel in. Any one in my business that takes that much time, gets fired, or i go insolvent. And Pochettino should never have accepted the job. So many years in England, and he cant talk English. Communication with the players must be a problem. And while we’re at it, get him a comb, and a shaver. Seriously, he doesn’t fit the profile.
Lol……… lmfao
Jackson is the EPL best striker in terms of pace and openings. However, I don’t think he will ever improve on his dribbling & finishing.
For now, let’s forget about trophies if we still lack a clinical striker who can convert chances to luck.
Leave it to SuperFrank to stake out the most negative take possible and then shout it from the rooftops, lol!
Has Nicolas Jackson got a lot of room for improvement? Undoubtedly, yes! But he’s also just 22 (nearly 23) and shows many of the signs of being a great goal scorer one day. SuperFrank whines and moans time and time again about all the things Jackson is not, but never shows the slightest bit of perspective! All Romano is reporting is that the club’s leadership have the (long-term) perspective that SuperFrank so badly lacks and still believe in Jackson’s potential. Meanwhile, all SuperFrank can do is insist on crucifying them all because Jackson’s not already prime-of-his-career Didier Drogba.
It’s beyond inane to keep recycling this petty (not to mention corrosive) vitriol over an issue that is well understood by all (including, no doubt, the player himself)—that Nicolas Jackson needs a lot of work on his finishing. One minute he’s scored a real “striker’s goal” against Everton and the next he’s fluffing his lines against City. It’s inconsistency and a lack of poise that’s not uncommon among young players, but there is ABSOLUTELY NO DENYING that Jackson is world class at getting into dangerous goal-scoring positions and so it’s silly to keep carping on about his inadequacies without giving him due credit for already doing the one thing that’s really hard to teach—turning up at the right place at the right time in order to create goal-scoring opportunities.