KIERAN GILL: Nicolas Jackson turned down Chelsea’s No 9 shirt to wear Didier Drogba’s old number… and the Blues’ £32m man is on track to match the Ivorian’s tally in his debut season at Stamford Bridge
- Nicolas Jackson scored the opener in Chelsea’s 3-2 win over Newcastle
- The Senegalese attacker is slowly settling into Stamford Bridge after a slow start
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For the first time, Nicolas Jackson can say he has no more yellow points in the Premier League than goals. That was a statistic that followed Chelsea’s newest striker, a stick with which he was beaten for being more bookable than bankable.
It was a quick move against Newcastle that gave Jackson his ninth goal of the season, with Chelsea remaining unbeaten every time the 22-year-old from Senegal scored. He is slowly but surely proving his worth after signing for £32million last summer.
It is certainly not easy to lead the way at Chelsea. Plenty of attempts have been made and failed, from Romelu Lukaku and Fernando Torres to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alvaro Morata, all wearing the No. 9 shirt, considered cursed in the corridors of their Cobham training ground.
Jackson had the chance to get that number when he arrived from Villarreal. He declined, despite having played for Senegal.
It left Chelsea as one of the few Premier League clubs without a designated number 9, the others being Aston Villa, Tottenham, Newcastle and Wolves.
Nicolas Jackson scored with a daring strike in the 3-2 win over Newcastle on Monday
The Senegal international chose the number 15 shirt as an example of Didier Drogba
The blues legend first wore number 15 when he moved to Stamford Bridge in 2004
Jackson instead opted for the unorthodox number 15, the same number Didier Drogba wore when he first arrived at Chelsea. Comparisons with Drogba were inevitable because of those numbers on his back.
Drogba scored ten Premier League goals from 26 games in his first season to win the title under Jose Mourinho. Jackson is now nine out of 24 in a season in which Chelsea are 11th.
Mauricio Pochettino says he will learn to exude composure in front of goal with time, after pleading for supporters’ patience when it comes to the Premier League newcomer this season.
Drogbas are big boots to fill. Ask Jackson and he’ll tell you himself that he knows there’s work to be done. It would be unwise and unfair to expect such heroics from Jackson so quickly, when this is a club used to seeing talented forwards come and go, join and choke, wind up and leave.
Yet perhaps Jackson’s most admirable quality is his ability to realize that he will make mistakes and refuse to let them get in his way.
Against Brentford he tackled himself while trying to perform step-overs in the penalty area – another moment to feed the social media meme machine.
Jackson responded by burying a header and celebrating by silencing the Brentford supporters who had stick-balled him at the Gtech Community Stadium.
Drogba then switched to number 11 as he scored 164 goals in 381 in all competitions for Chelsea
Against Newcastle he scored after six minutes, a deft move so disguised that even the Stamford Bridge announcer originally credited the goal to Cole Palmer. Replays showed it was worth Chelsea’s first goal in the Premier League since 2018.
He scored a second, which was disallowed by the assistant’s flag, as he had not maintained his run enough to avoid the offside trap. Later, his glancing header set up Raheem Sterling to score a one-on-one from which he should have secured his fourth assist of the season.
Despite all the criticism, Jackson shows why it would be wrong to categorize him as a dud at 22, in his first season at Chelsea, in charge of a club that has undergone a major change and is doing well.