Mauricio Pochettino has backed Nicolas Jackson to continue ‘changing opinions’ at Chelsea after the forward’s impressive recent form.
Jackson scored the winner at Nottingham Forest last weekend to net for the third consecutive Premier League game and has now scored 17 goals in all competitions this season.
The 22-year-old has been criticised during his debut campaign with Chelsea and only five players have a bigger underperformance on their Expected Goals (xG) metric than Jackson in the Premier League.
However, he could become the first Chelsea player since December 2021 to score in four successive league games against Brighton this evening, while his 14 non-penalty goals in the Premier League is more than Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah and teammate Cole Palmer.
He has also outscored Didier Drogba’s debut season at Chelsea (16) and Pochettino said Chelsea have confidence that Jackson can be a a ‘fantastic striker’.
“I think Nico has the potential to be a very, very good striker, a fantastic striker. It is only about patience and time,” Pochettino said at his pre-match press conference ahead of facing Brighton on Wednesday.
“He got criticism from the beginning because he was always compared with Didier Drogba after he had been here a few years. And when I talk about the history of the club, it is the same… we are in the process of building a team to match the history of Chelsea.
“To judge and be so radical with your opinions, be careful because it is about seeing what is going on and what we are doing here.
“With Nico, through confidence and through working really hard, he is changing opinions.
“I accept, if you are seeing things that you do not like then you can describe it but because football is so dynamic and can change, I am so happy that people are now seeing Nico in the way we saw him [earlier in the season].”
