Chelsea: Nicolas Jackson moves out of Cole Palmer shadow to earn new status ahead of big summer

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·2 Mei 2025

Chelsea: Nicolas Jackson moves out of Cole Palmer shadow to earn new status ahead of big summer

The Blues are expected to sign a new striker this summer but their current frontman is firmly established

Your matchday briefing on Chelsea, featuring team news and expert analysis from Malik Ouzia

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Of all Chelsea’s impressive performances in the first half of the season, it was, oddly, that in 2-1 defeat at Liverpool in October which came to be held up as the great show of their progress.

Of all the goals Nicolas Jackson scored in the same period - nine in 15 league games to start the campaign - it was of his strike at Anfield that you might have said something similar.

Arcing his run, Jackson slipped the attentions of one half of the title-winning centre-back pairing in Ibrahima Konate and ran off the back of the other in Virgil van Dijk. So perfectly timed was his movement that he was initially flagged offside, only for VAR to intervene. Under pressure from Van Dijk and the covering Andy Robertson, he slipped a composed finish inside Caoimhin Kelleher’s near post in the nick of time. Had it not been for some shoddy defending minutes later, Chelsea would have left Merseyside with a deserved point.

Ahead of Sunday’s reverse fixture, which will see the newly-crowned champions visit Stamford Bridge, Jackson has at last rediscovered that scoring touch, and again, not a moment too soon.

After four months without a goal (admittedly, two of those spent sidelined with a hamstring injury), Jackson now has three in a game-and-a-half, following his crucial winner against Everton on Saturday with two away at Djurgarden here, having only come off the bench at half-time in Chelsea’s 4-1 semi-final first leg win.

Nicolas Jackson scored twice in Stockholm

Action Images via Reuters

“It's all about confidence,” Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca said afterwards, and even by the standards of young centre-forwards, Jackson does seem a player particularly reliant on that. “You see now that he looks a different player from weeks ago.”

In scoring the goals that are keeping Chelsea’s twin targets for the run-in within reach, Jackson is emerging from Cole Palmer’s shadow, the playmaker himself under a cloud for the first time in his Chelsea career on what is now a run of 18 games without a goal.

Largely because of Palmer’s incessant brilliance for his first 18 months at Stamford Bridge, there has never really been a prolonged period when Jackson has thrived outside the slipstream of his No10.

No doubt, they are at their best in tandem, making one another better players, but you have always suspected that relationship was more heavily tilted one way. Any striker, surely, could score goals with Palmer laying them on a plate.

That assessment is unfair, as is clear to anyone who saw how badly Chelsea missed Jackson’s all-round game during his injury absence. Still, it will do his reputation no harm if he is the player to drag Chelsea over the line on two fronts as Palmer’s lull rumbles on.

True, Palmer technically assisted the first of Jackson’s goals here, but the Englishman’s pass was overhit and it was only the eventual scorer’s willingness to hustle a lost cause that forced a comical mix-up in the Djurgarden defence. His second finish was that of a man with that confidence restored, whipped into the top corner.

Jadon Sancho impressed in the first half

Action Images via Reuters

There are players in this Chelsea squad who are playing for their futures over the last month of this campaign, none more explicitly than Jadon Sancho, whose loan from Manchester United will only become permanent if the Blues opt to pay a £20-25million transfer fee, rather than a £5m penalty to send him back.

Sancho opened the scoring here and was, along with another fringe member in Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, excellent in the period of the game that mattered most, that first-half spell when Chelsea fought to quiet the crowd and wrestle control of the tie.

Strangely, players in the same category helping Chelsea push into the Champions League over the next few weeks - thus increasing their spending power and heft this summer - could end up as the turkeys who voted for Christmas.

There are others, though, who have been regulars in Maresca’s first team this season and are now trying to convince club and manager that they do not need upgrading upon before next term.

They include goalkeeper Robert Sanchez and, for differing reasons, both first-choice centre-halves, but Jackson falls into the same bracket.

He is going nowhere but with Christopher Nkunku surely off, Chelsea are expected to sign a new centre-forward.

Will that be a player to compete and dovetail with Jackson - someone like, say, Liam Delap, who has a £30m release clause following Ipswich’s relegation? Or will it be a marquee addition like Victor Osimhen, who the club wanted to usurp Jackson 12 months ago but failed to land?