“It’s over” – Fabrizio Romano declares Chelsea player’s Stamford Bridge career done | OneFootball

It’s the first preseason friendly of the summer, things aren’t supposed to be so juicy…

Yet Chelsea always find a way to make things spicy, and even the selection for a potentially tame warmup game has turned into something much bigger.

The team for this evening’s game against Bayer Leverkusen is out, and there were some pretty notable absences.

None of the players likely to be sold this summer were in the squad at all – that includes Christopher Nkunku, Renato Veiga, and… Nicolas Jackson.

Jackson’s status has gone from “probably staying” to “probably leaving” to “definitely leaving” over the course of just a few days. His omission confirms it, as does this Tweet from insider Fabrizio Romano.

Fabrizio Romano gives death knell to Jackson’s Chelsea career

Fabrizio Romano says Nicolas Jackson’s time with Chelsea is “over.”

The Italian insider has declared “it’s over” between Jackson and Chelsea, after days of mounting talk of a move to Manchester United, Newcastle or Bayern Munich.

Leaving him out of the squad tonight just underlines how sure all parties must be that a move is incoming. His departure will continues the crazy pace of change at Chelsea. Players who were set to be first team starts for years to come are never nearly as settled as they seem.

Chelsea forced to show their hand with lineup decision

The problem with this is that now all the interested parties know that he’s set to leave, our leverage has dropped dramatically. We just have to bank on the fact that they’re all keen to sign him, and that they’re all increasingly desperate to add an attacking option.

Jackson is a young, proven Premier League goalscorer with bags of improvement still to come, and that’s’ a valuable thing. It’s just a question of playing these teams off against each other.