Ex-Tottenham star sends ‘major factor’ warning to Chelsea over hat-trick hero | OneFootball

Nicolas Jackson celebrates scoring against Tottenham.

Former Tottenham striker Dimitar Berbatov has warned that Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson needs to show more “consistency” after his hat-trick in the Blues’ 4-1 win against Spurs on Monday night.

Jackson’s second-half treble settled a pulsating London derby where five goals were disallowed and red cards were shown to Spurs pair Cristian Romero and Destiny Udogie either side of half-time.

While Chelsea were far from vintage on their way to a 4-1 victory, Jackson eventually made the difference.

The Senegal attacker side-footed home his first goal in the 75th minute from Raheem Sterling’s cross before he grabbed a similar second after Conor Gallagher’s pass and completed his treble in the seventh minute of stoppage time when he rounded Guglielmo Vicario.

After receiving more yellow cards (five) than goals (three) during the first three months of the campaign, the £31million summer signing from Villarreal started to pay back his price tag on Monday night.

But Berbatov thinks Jackson has a long way to go before he is putting in consistent performances for Chelsea with the former Tottenham striker claiming his goals against Spurs were “easy”.

“That hat-trick is going to be good for Nicolas Jackson, obviously,” Berbatov told Betfair.

“He’s stating his position by saying, ‘I can be the No.9 for Chelsea’ – but it’s still early days for him. He needs to continue to work hard to get scoring opportunities.

“Sometimes when he gets in a good scoring opportunity, his shot on goal is missing.

“The Tottenham game will be good for his confidence, although we can’t forget that it was 11 vs 9, so it was easy for him to get those scoring opportunities.

“The important thing was that when he got those scoring opportunities, he scored the goals.

“It’s a good hat-trick for him to build his confidence, but consistency will be a major factor for him.”

Jackson was elated to have scored a hat-trick after a difficult start to his time in the Premier League, the Chelsea striker said: “Yeah, very happy. It was a difficult time for everybody in the team, but now we are coming back slowly, slowly and I am very happy to score three goals.

“It has been very difficult (for me) but life is like this. Now my first hat-trick and I am very happy I did it in the biggest club in England and everywhere.

“Always need to improve, always need to work harder. We continue working and now this (hat-trick) is the past, so we forget about it and move forward.

“We were dreaming about this, playing big games and winning big games. Now we continue to work hard and the confidence is coming slowly, slowly.”