Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson has a clear message for anyone who wants to criticise him this season.
Quite simply, he is saying that those who have been critical of him do not know football and he is only listening to someone who does know football, his Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino.
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Jackson has been inconsistent this season to say the least, which I guess means I don’t know football either because I am offering some critique with those words!!
But even still, his numbers are good in terms of getting the ball in the back of the net and really, what more do you want from your striker than to be scoring goals?
It’s not a bad return at all for a new striker coming to a new league and a new club, especially a league as tough at the Premier League.
So really, he should just keep his head down and accept that in today’s game, fans and pundits are always going to offer critique, and it is also now just heightened by social media. It’s the way things are.
In words cited by The Evening Standard, Jackson said: “It is OK, it is not what I was going for, though it is my first season, so I am happy, although everybody is talking s***, I am very happy I don’t care what people say.
“It is just people who don’t know about football. I will just continue to play more games and score more goals for the team.
“I should have scored more because I have missed some chances. The Premier League is different from La Liga, where I came from. I am trying to adapt myself.
“It is not an excuse. I am trying to continue to work harder and listen to people. Not the people who do not know football, I listen to the coach that knows more football and try to improve myself.
“[Pochettino] has been with a lot of young players, so he motivates me every day and tells me to go and he has seen people worse than me [in the past] and they are now big players.
“De Bruyne was here and Salah was here. They struggled here and are now big players. They didn’t listen to people who don’t know football, he keeps telling me that.
“He knows football; they don’t know football, so I don’t listen to them.”