The Chelsea squad continues to balloon as Todd Boehly hands out transfer fees and contracts like candy.
With the Blues having already brought Pedro Neto, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Omari Kellyman, and Marc Guiu into just the attacking ranks this season, as well as a deserving new contract for Cole Palmer, questions have been raised as to where all the minutes for this many players will be found.
Yet instead of cutting an appropriate number of attacking players loose from the current squad to make room, Chelsea are seemingly doubling down on the players already in tow as well.
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According to Matt Law of the Daily Telegraph , Chelsea are hoping to extend Nicolas Jackson's contract after an "impressive first season at the club." The 23-year-old signed an eight-year contract upon arriving last summer from Villarreal, but is apparently already up for a renewal with seven years remaining on the initial deal.
Even aside from the incredible length remaining on his first contract, does Jackson deserve a new deal, and with it, the likely salary increase?
It's hard to concur that Jackson's first season was indeed "impressive," as Law puts it.
Despite Chelsea's insistence on stockpiling wingers, midfielders, and other chance creators, the Blues were actually quite good at engineering opportunities in front of goal. Last season, Chelsea ranked fifth in the Premier League in expected goals according to Opta, and ranked first in expected goals per shot, meaning they had a significant amount of strong attacking opportunities.
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Chelsea's biggest issue last season was defending, but in the attacking third, they struggled to finish chances. The Blues finished with 77 goals on 75.26 xG, a positive differential, but diving deeper into the numbers tells a bigger story and puts Jackson in the spotlight. Cole Palmer's sensational season saw him walk away with an impressive +3.82 xG differential, meaning the rest of the Chelsea squad was a net negative.
At the forefront of that was Jackson, who sported a -4.64 xG differential, third-worst in the Premier League behind only Dominic Calvert-Lewin (who had an historically bad season in front of goal), Brennan Johnson, and Darwin Nunez.
What's more is that Jackson sported the third-best xG per shot value of 0.23, meaning he was being provided with high-quality opportunities to score by his teammates. Yet the Senegal international converted those into 0.35 xGOT/SOT, 61st in the Premier League amongst players in the top 100 expected goals. Essentially, Jackson took a high volume of fantastic pre-shot opportunities, and turned them into poor post-shot results.
Thus, the report that Chelsea are not only pleased with Jackson's performances but are ready to hand him a new contract so soon despite the length remaining on his current deal raises significant questions about their plan for the future.
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