Athletic: Jackson “happy to be leaving Chelsea” and returning him won’t be easy | OneFootball

There remains plenty of confusion about Nicolas Jackson’s situation at Chelsea.

He was just hours away from completing a loan move to Bayern Munich, but Liam Delap’s injury earlier today threw the whole thing into chaos. There’s now word out from David Ornstein that Chelsea have cancelled the deal.

It’s a nasty situation to be in for Chelsea – but given their situation, they don’t have much choice.

Chelsea’s Jackson decision backed by pundit

Simon Johnson of The Athletic said similar things in his analysis of the move – it’s the right one, but at some cost, both financially and potentially in terms of the squad harmony.

“There is never a dull moment at Chelsea but this is the right call. They had to act fast following Delap’s injury and they have made a good decision,” Johnson claimed.

“With the schedule getting so much tougher when the Champions League gets under way from mid-September, Chelsea could not afford to be down to one recognised striker in Joao Pedro.”

Jackson’s mental state questioned after dream move falls apart at the last

Nicolas Jackson at Munich airport.

As we said too, it might not be as simple as just putting Jackson back into the squad. He’s likely to be unhappy about a potential dream move being cancelled:

“The task of reintegrating Jackson into the camp might not be so easy. The forward was happy to be leaving England for a fresh challenge at Bayern Munich. Chelsea made their intentions clear by dropping him down the pecking order when they signed Delap and Joao Pedro in June,” Johnson wrote.

“The Senegal international wanted to leave, especially with the ambitions of playing at the World Cup next year and worried about a lack of game time. In saying that, Chelsea are recalling a player that knows Maresca’s methods and has scored 24 Premier League goals in two seasons.”