Chelsea sign Senegalese striker Nicholas Jackson

Rebuilding after last season’s disaster, Chelsea made a very unexpected deal. He acquired Senegalese striker Nicholas Jackson from the Spanish Villarreal, who until recently was not interested in any of the giants, and raised his quotes only thanks to an amazingly productive game in the past two months.

The fact that Nicholas Jackson moves from Villarreal to Chelsea, reported The Guardianbbc, The Athletic and other media resources. The contract with him should be signed in the coming days. The amount of the transfer is estimated by various sources in the range from €35 million to €37 million.

It is part of a major overhaul by management and new Londoner manager Mauricio Pochettino after the disaster experienced last season, the first for Chelsea since the change of ownership – Roman Abramovich sold the team to a consortium of entrepreneurs led by American Todd Boely. The new owners invested huge amounts of money in the club, spending a record amount of about £ 550 million on staffing within two transfer windows. However, instead of taking off, there was a resounding failure on all fronts, primarily in the national championship: Chelsea finished in it on 12 -th position.

What is happening in the club now is very similar to a global purge. Chelsea have already got rid of a whole group of players who were considered top players.

N’Golo Kante and Kalidou Koulibaly have traveled to Saudi Arabia as deals are about to close for Arsenal and Manchester City for Kai Havertz and Mateo Kovacic. And in the list of those with whom, according to British publications, Chelsea will say goodbye after them, Hakim Ziyech, Edouard Mendy, Mason Mount.

Acquisitions are far fewer. Strictly speaking, Nicholas Jackson will be only second behind Leipzig’s Christopher Nkunku. In both cases, we are talking about forwards, which is no coincidence. It was the attack that was Chelsea’s weakest link last season. But the two attackers have completely different backgrounds.

The purchase of Christopher Nkunku, the top scorer of the German championship, often playing for the French national team, which cost Chelsea about €60 million, looked like a completely ordinary move: a top club chose a top player without any reservations.

Case with Nicholas Jackson is of a completely different kind. In fact, a deal with him is a big surprise.

22-year-old Jackson found himself in Europe only in 2020. And first, Villarreal sent the Senegalese to gain experience in the second division in terms of status – to the Mirandes team, and then kept him in the farm club for a long time.

In fact, last season was Nicholas Jackson’s first full season at the elite level. Moreover, for most of it, the striker, who played only three matches for the Senegal national team, kept himself very modest. In winter, however, interested Bournemouth, who fought for survival in the English top flight, but the transfer fell through after the player was injured during a medical examination.

But then something amazing happened. In total, Nicholas Jackson has 12 goals in the Spanish championship – this is not an outstanding indicator: the player took a place at the tail of the scorer’s top ten. But the thing is that Jackson scored ten of those goals in the last two months of the championship, in 11 matches. As it turned out, the explosion increased the demand for him so much that even a real football giant became interested in the striker, even if it was a crisis giant.

Alexey Dospekhov