Chelsea find themselves in an unexpected situation. Coming into the season, the hope was that this would be the campaign that they would take a step forward and turn into title contenders. It has been far from that. In fact, it feels like the Club World Cup triumph might have only papered over cracks that had always existed and have allowed them to grow wider in silence.
The Chelsea board has a lot of questions to answer about the summer transfer window they had. They left Enzo Maresca short of options at striker and centre-back, not bringing in replacements despite key players picking up long-term injuries.
In fact, despite knowing that Liam Delap was out for the foreseeable future, Nicolas Jackson was allowed to leave for Bayern Munich. It was on a loan deal with an obligation to buy, although some implausible conditions need to be met for it to be activated.
Despite that, the feeling is that Jackson will never play for Chelsea again. While speaking on his YouTube channel, Fabrizio Romano said:
"If you ask me today, the feeling around Nico Jackson and Chelsea is that Nicolas Jackson will not play for Chelsea anymore, is that the story between Nicolas Jackson and Chelsea is completely over."
Fabrizio Romano believes 24-year-old will never play for Chelsea again
Jackson arrived at Chelsea in the summer of 2023 and was the first-choice striker for two seasons. In that period of time, he scored a combined 30 goals, 17 in the first campaign and 13 in the second.
That is not a terrible output by any means but also not good enough to be the main man for Chelsea. That being said, he also had a lot of brilliant qualities that made those around him better.
And at the end of the day, he was a reliable option to have around. Right now, Maresca is not in a position to rest Joao Pedro and has to play him three times in the space of a week despite knowing that the Brazilian is not fully fit.
Even though Marc Guiu was brought back from Sunderland, Maresca seems more comfortable putting Tyrique George up front, even though the only reason he is still at the club is because a late summer transfer move collapsed. It is just a mess of a situation that the Blues have put themselves in and have only themselves to blame for it.