In typically unconvincing fashion, Chelsea march on, thanks to the striker who is now, nestled nicely in Erling Haaland’s slipstream, perhaps the Premier League’s second-most-effective marksman.
The social media ridicule in the end became a difficult watch. Glaring misses in big games – the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City a particularly profligate afternoon – saw Nicolas Jackson chastised by fans young and old, even his own, in a distasteful manner you only get from the brave souls sat behind their computer keyboards at home.
Only Haaland and another social media class clown, Darwin Nunez, missed more big chances than Jackson last season, leading to calls for the Senegal striker to be a makeweight for further incomings as Enzo Maresca shuffled his Chelsea pack in the summer transfer window.
Maresca, like several other more level-headed observers, was able to see the wood from the trees and understood that Jackson’s numbers – 17 goals in all competitions in his debut season, more than Didier Drogba managed in his – were enough to earn him time to cement his spot as Chelsea’s frontline hitman.
After Jackson’s match-winning contribution at the King Power, scoring one superbly taken opener against Leicester City and having a hand in Chelsea’s second, the doubters are disappearing from view.
What is causing so many memes to be swiftly deleted is how clinical Jackson has become this term. From fewer than two and a half shots per game this season, the Blues striker has amassed seven goals.
The confidence in the finish at the King Power, albeit against utterly woeful defending, was not the mark of a striker who has paid much attention to what is being said about him recently.
The tenacity to beat a stumbling Wout Faes to the ball was commendable, the swivel nimble in flight, the control he had on the ball was as if he had his own gravitational pull over it, while his finish was never going anywhere other than the bottom corner.
Jackson did little else all game until popping up with the header that led to Enzo Fernandez firing home Chelsea’s second, but in Maresca’s intricate system, which has a different complexity to it when in possession compared to when they don’t have the ball, that’s all he is needed for.
Last season is one of those years Chelsea will do their best to erase from history, such was the omnishambles unfolding at Stamford Bridge before a late revival earned them a respectable league finish.
To judge any Chelsea player, let alone a 22-year-old brought to the Premier League with barely any first-team experience – a half-season at Villarreal when, for a very short period, he outscored Karim Benzema – on the 2024-25 comedy of errors is beyond unfair. Now, everything is in place for Jackson to succeed as Chelsea have started to turn the corner and are, earlier than everyone predicted, moving toward being genuine title contenders.
He doesn’t have to play three times a week like Haaland does, given the sheer volume of alternatives desperate for a Europa Conference League outing, while Maresca has found the perfect role for Cole Palmer as an inside-left forward that makes him a creative threat as well as a goal one, with service coming from wide positions in abundance, too.
And he is delivering. “This excites me, he’s come on a bundle this season,” former Chelsea midfielder Joe Cole said of Jackson’s King Power display. Perhaps, Joe, like many others, you let social media form your judgements for you.
Those who look at the numbers, and appreciate the chaotic environment in which Jackson was forced to operate last season, had not already written him off before he was allowed to find his feet.
