The Senegal striker's red card against Newcastle kickstarted a pile-on, but he is not the only guilty party in the chaos of the BlueCo regime
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You have to be clever and cunning to get away with football's 'dark arts'. It's not only a matter of being snide, but deceitful and dastardly like a cartoon villain. Think about Jose Mourinho in Tottenham's documentary telling his new players they must behave like 'intelligent c*nts'.
Well, there was nothing intelligent about Nicolas Jackson's elbow square to the jaw of poor Sven Botman during Chelsea's trip to Newcastle on Sunday, one which ended with his dismissal and the Blues losing 2-0 in what was effectively a six-pointer in the race to secure Champions League qualification. There was no attempt to hide Jackson's contempt, staring down the defender long before the high ball from goalkeeper Robert Sanchez had returned to Earth, before planting his pointed forearm straight into the Dutchman's unsuspecting face. And he would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for that meddling VAR.
The knives were quickly out for Jackson, which was a fair reaction and reflection having acted so daftly rather than deftly in Chelsea's biggest game of the season so far. Defeat at St James' Park has left them just about in the Premier League's top five, only leading sixth-place Aston Villa on goal difference with two matches remaining. The club are desperate to secure a lucrative return to the Champions League, but blame cannot be solely or directly pointed at Jackson if they fall short now – this is a downfall of Chelsea's own making.
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During his two seasons at Chelsea, Jackson has accumulated 18 yellow cards. That in itself is a shocking streak of ill-discipline, but given most of these were awarded for dissent or needless fouls without rhyme or reason, it's an indictment on the striker's inability to control himself.
Four yellows into the 2023-24 campaign – all picked up by – then-manager Mauricio Pochettino said: "We were talking about it today because we were in a meeting with him and Enzo [Fernandez]. I told him for a striker to get four yellow cards only for protesting or talking to the referee, it's so easy, so cheap, getting yellow cards like that. Sometimes you need to get a yellow card in different actions, but not because of that. If it keeps happening and he gets suspended, he is going to put the team in a very difficult situation. He needs to be clever and not to protest to the referees in this way, but he understood. Jackson is 21 also and he's young. He needs to learn, needs to improve, needs to settle himself."
Yet Jackson was booked in his very next game to earn a suspension only six matches into the campaign. Here we are nearly two years later and he is scarcely any wiser, besides improving on a rate of seeing yellow five games in every six.
AdvertisementGetty/GOALFighting with Chelsea royalty
After overcoming a pretty poor first impression, Jackson eventually won over the match-going faithful last year for his improved form in front of goal and evident desire to win at all costs. The relationship took a step back last summer, however, when he got into it with club legend John Obi Mikel – one of a select few alumni to have a banner in his honour at Stamford Bridge – on social media.
It stemmed from Mikel's public desire for Chelsea to add a more proven scorer to their ranks. "You need a striker who knows how to hit a ball in the back of the net and that's what we don't have," the Nigerian said. "I know I talk so much about [Jackson] and sometimes I sound like I disrespect him. I don't disrespect him. I think at Chelsea Football Club we need a top striker who can get us a goal."
In rebuttal, Jackson took to Instagram and wrote: "Shut your mouth, don't talk sh*t, we are killing ourself for Africa." Since then, Mikel promised to lay off the Senegal international if he backed up his words with action, but midway through a run of 12 Premier League games without a goal this season, the ex-midfielder reignited the feud.
"We've talked about getting another top, top striker who can win us these kind of games, difficult games where if Nicolas Jackson is not firing on all cylinders you can give him a rest and then get someone else to come into the team and try to win us games and score goals," Mikel said in January. "We are not clinical enough, he is not scoring enough goals. He puts himself in the right positions, but then he’s not finishing, he's not scoring enough.
"He's not a striker who’s going to get us to the top four or win us the Premier League title. He's not that striker. I don't think he can get us over the line in terms of winning trophies. For me, he's a player who can link up play, he's good on the ball but he's not scoring enough goals. If we had Victor Osimhen or the guy from Sporting, Viktor Gyokeres, trust me, we'd still be competing for the Premier League. Nicolas is not scoring enough, the finishing, he needs to find a way. For me it’s a bit of a worry because we’re not scoring enough."
Mikel going back for seconds is not necessarily Jackson's fault, but it shouldn't have been a point of contention to begin with, both from a scoring perspective and acknowledging criticism from a fan-favourite so aggressively.
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This is the string that when you pull at it, the whole Chelsea project unravels. The club have made no secret of their desire to almost completely rebrand as a premier destination for the world's top talent. In essence, they want to be a bigger version of Brighton, yet keep away from the spotlight of scrutiny and play the long game for return on investment.
Without any tangible leadership to guide them though, the Blues' top talents are being failed. Young footballers can't just be thrown together and asked to figure life out for themselves. It didn't help that the top brass decided to do away with Pochettino, someone with a proven track record of helping youthful squads mature and blossom, with an inexperienced head coach in Enzo Maresca.
Jackson, who had nine Premier League goals by Christmas but will end the campaign with only 10, has seen his growth stunted because the club have not put enough measures in place to keep him on the straight and narrow. The same can be said of all of their stars, with Cole Palmer even struggling without an older head to lean on. A free signing from Fulham, Tosin Adarabioyo has been cast as one of the leaders in the dressing room. No disrespect to a decent-level centre-back, but this is Chelsea Football Club we're talking about here.
The past few transfer windows, there have been so many noises out of west London about the hierarchy's happiness in the direction they are heading in, that this is a long-term vision which will take some time to fully see and realise. There are so many different distractions at Chelsea that it's easy to get swept up in any of them even before you reach what's happening with the men's team. It should be no surprise this culture of chaos has extended to the pitch given how much neglect has gone into the assembly of the squad, one of promise but without the tools to improve.
Getty Images SportMaresca has been cornered
There are plenty of Chelsea supporters who are already running out of patience with Maresca. Midway through the season, the Blues looked like title contenders, but a mandate to forcefully play that notion down must have played a part in their waning form through the second half of the campaign.
Similarities have also been spotted between this year and Maresca's 2023-24 season with Leicester City. Boasting by far the strongest squad in the Championship, the Foxes steamrolled their way into first place for the first two-thirds of the campaign, but when they were effectively figured out by the rest of the division, they nearly squandered their shot at automatic promotion. In the end, quality on the pitch was decisive and they still finished in first place in spite of this wobble.
Such eerie parallels shouldn't be unexpected given how relatively young himself Maresca is in this industry. The lack of any sort of stability at Chelsea has only made his job harder, to boot. He has depended on a small core of players including Jackson, Palmer, Fernandez and Moises Caicedo, but everyone else has been interchangeable to his and the team's detriment.
When it emerged recently that Chelsea were thinking of making an offer to Virgil van Dijk before he signed a contract extension at Liverpool, it was clear the club saw this as an opportunity to fast-track an acquisition of experience, perhaps a belated replacement for the veteran Thiago Silva after losing his presence in 2024. This attempt failed, but that shouldn't stop them from continuing to look at this sort of profile.
The kids can't do it all alone, and nor can Maresca at this stage of his own career – there are so many decision-makers at Chelsea and yet the head coach is the only one being held accountable for the club's actions.
