The transfer window is now closed and Chelsea know that they will be working until January at the earliest without a senior striker to back up Nicolas Jackson.
That’s pretty worrying – although the Senegal striker has done all he can in the first two games to reassure fans that he can handle it on his own. He’s 2 for 2 in goals, and he spoke to the club’s official website after the game about the beautiful counter-attacking goal he scored – plus the chance at the end that he should have scored which would have won the game.
“It was fantastic counter-attack,” Jackson said of the opening goal, which saw Noni Madueke and Cole Palmer combine down the right to create the chance for the striker to tap in.
“We train on this every time at the training ground, so we know exactly what we need to do on the pitch as well.”
It did have the look of a rehearsed goal, with every player knowing just what run to make.
The chance at the end was a painful one, as Dean Henderson was able to make an important intervention to stop Jackson winning the game. For all his good points, there’s the suspicion that his lack of clinical finishing could end up letting us down this season, and in this case he claimed he was too fatigued:
“It was the last minute, I was a little bit tired, but I made the run and hopefully next time I will score one like this,” he concluded.
Jackson back on last season’s path
With no other senior options, Jackson is going to have to play a lot of games this season, just like last season.
We worry that a lot of them are going to be like this – he will show off his strengths and his weaknesses in one game, doing great work for 90 minutes but missing the chance to bring us 3 points.