Chelsea’s “four man shortlist” for Jackson backup named by sources | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca’s comments yesterday about Liam Delap were very positive, and reminded us all of how likely it is that Chelsea sign a striker this summer.

Football.London’s Bobby Vincent has today reported that the Blues have reduced their targets to a four man shortlist: Delap is joined by Jonathan David, Hugo Ekitike and Benjamin Sesko.

All are young, but have a decent bit of pedigree and goalscoring record at a high level. There are differences between them of course, but they all come into a similar category. The fact that they’re on the list while the likes of Victor Osimhen and Viktor Gyokeres are not seems to confirm the reports we heard over the last couple of weeks that Chelsea’s approach is very clearly now to try and find a young player to complement Nicolas Jackson rather than an established elite player to replace him.

“Jackson is incredibly highly rated by those at Chelsea and they believe he can go on to become a world-class centre forward with time,” Vincent wrote.

“Delap, while being a tremendous talent himself, would be a really useful rotation option alongside Jackson and Chelsea would have a seriously impressive pair of strikers to choose from.”

Chelsea’s striker hesitation may end up costing them dearly

Chelsea directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart doing an interview for Chelsea

This last couple of months without Jackson reminded us all that we need a number 9 of some description. In fact, not signing one last summer may end up proving fatal for our Champions League chances. Since Jackson hurt himself in January we dropped so many points and wasted our commanding position in the league.

They can’t make that mistake again this summer. There are 4 good options on their shortlist and they have the money to sign them – they can’t miss out again.