Nicolas Jackson will never be an elite striker – Chelsea need to solve the issue this summer

Chelsea exited the FA Cup due to Jackson’s wastefulness, and it’s become clear he is not the answer to the club’s long-standing striker problem

By Jon Turner | April 21, 2024

By most rational accounts, Nicolas Jackson is having a decent debut season for Chelsea.

His 10 Premier League goals is the same amount Didier Drogba scored in his first year and he still has seven games to play. He’s scored only one less this season than Liverpool’s Darwin Nunez, who’s earned plenty of praise for his vast second-year improvement.

A total of 18 goal involvements (13 goals, 5 assists) across 37 games in all competitions, means the Senegalese striker makes a key contribution on average every two games. Again, a decent return.

If we look at his Premier League shot conversion – Jackson’s had 60 shots this season, so is scoring a goal every six shots. That is FAR better than both Nunez (103 shots = 9.3 shots per goal) and Manchester City’s Julian Alvarez (89 shots for 8 goals = 11.1 shots per goal).

It also shouldn’t be discounted how challenging it can be for many players to adjust to new surroundings. For a player like Jackson, that adjustment can be particularly tough. Here was a 21-year-old raw talent moving to England and playing in the Premier League for the first time, adapting to the pressures of a major club like Chelsea.

To make the move even more of a challenge, Jackson arrived at a club in such extreme transition that there wasn’t a single existing partnership in any position on the pitch.

And yet, despite the evidence to support a defence of his inconsistency, anyone who has watched Jackson sufficiently this season will agree that he is not an elite-level striker – and never will be.

Of course, he’s missed a boatload of goalscoring chances that have left us pulling out our hair and screaming at the TV, but it’s more than that.

It’s the decision-making in and around the area. It’s the absence of calm and clarity when one-on-one with the goalkeeper. It’s the basic-level movement in the area. It’s the deficiency in technique. It’s the lack of an all-consuming obsession to score. That killer instinct, that ruthless determination – he just doesn’t have it.

And it was all so painfully and glaringly on display in the FA Cup semi-final defeat to Manchester City.

Missed chances are a part of football and are begrudgingly accepted by the fans, but consistently making the wrong decisions under pressure and his shortage of composure during moments of goalscoring opportunity show a player who simply does not possess that clinical striker DNA.

Jackson hasn’t been helped by Chelsea, either. How a club with genuine ambitions to challenge for major honours can only have one senior striker in the squad boggles the mind. It has left the Senegalese exposed and overworked; Mauricio Pochettino can’t take him out of the firing line during difficult spells because the manager has no other options up front.

If the Blues had just one experienced striker, who could share the burden and from whom Jackson could learn – an Olivier Giroud-type player – then it would make a world of difference both to Jackson and the overall health and progress of the team.

Chelsea legend, and the club’s greatest-ever goalscorer, Frank Lampard summed it up perfectly while analysing the FA Cup defeat.

“I feel for him a little bit because he made lots of good movement. He’s a young striker, the attributes we saw in him today where he’s racing Kyle Walker, he’s shown pace … but there’s a technical detail there, the extra touch, the decision making at the highest level in these highest level of games that are the difference,” Lampard said.

“The header, you hit that anywhere but [the goalkeeper’s] body, it’s a goal. Little decision making. I feel for him, we’ve all been there, we’ve all missed chances and it’s a critical one for the game. But as a young player, that’s the level that you have to be as a striker for Chelsea.”

To be perfectly clear, Jackson is a good player. He dribbles with pace, has the skill to beat defenders, makes fast and dangerous runs in behind the opposition backline, and is happy to sacrifice for the team and get stuck in with defensive duties. And he’s only going to get better.

With those attributes, Jackson would be ideally suited to a place on the left wing, with the occasional game as centre-forward when required to deputise.

Which leads us to the seemingly never-ending plead from Chelsea fans to the club: please address the striker situation once and for all.

Not since Diego Costa seven years ago have the Blues had a reliable centre-forward to lead the line and supply a regular stream of goals. In that time, (*deep breath*) Loic Remy, Radamel Falcao, Alex Pato, Michy Batshuayi, Alvaro Morata, Gonzalo Higuain, Timo Werner, Kai Havertz, Romelu Lukaku, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have all come and gone having failed to solve Chelsea’s striker problem.

It’s not lost on Chelsea fans that the most effective strikers during that spell were local lad Tammy Abraham and Giroud, who was signed initially as cover before becoming first-choice.

(Click on the image to see the striker’s Chelsea stats)

In the current squad, Christopher Nkunku no doubt has the ability to contribute his share of goals, but the Frenchman’s perpetual injury issues means he simply can’t be relied upon at present. When fit, Nkunku has the talent to be a star for the Blues but to maximise his contribution, he needs to be deployed at No 10, thus leaving the striker issue still unresolved.

There will be plenty of time at the end of the season to speculate over who could arrive to fix one of the most glaring problems in this Chelsea team, but what is clear is that the owners need to be looking at players with the necessary experience.

That should mean looking primarily at players already proven in the Premier League, already adapted to life and football in England. Of those, two names stand out above all others: Newcastle’s Alexander Isak and Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins.

Whether a deal for either is even possible, we’ll have to wait and see in the summer. What is abundantly clear, though, is Chelsea need to get their next striker decision right.