After netting the first hat-trick of his professional career, Nicolas Jackson reflected on the dramatic London derby and explained why the victory against Tottenham carries extra significance for this Chelsea team.
Jackson missed several opportunities before scoring three goals in the last 25 minutes against the nine men of Spurs. He is the first Chelsea player to score a hat-trick against Tottenham since Samuel Eto’o in 2014. Moreover, he is the first player in Chelsea’s history to score a hat-trick against Tottenham in an away match since Tore Andre Flo’s famous 6-1 victory in 1997.
“I have been dreaming of this since I was young and I made it come true,” enthused the Senegalese.
“I’m very happy. It is my first hat-trick. It was an intense game. We play football for these kinds of games.
I was running behind the defence. They had it well organised. Their goalkeeper surprised me, he is quick! Maybe we could have scored three more, he helped them a lot, but we had the players to provide for us at the right time. We did that and scored four goals.
Even with 11 we said this was a game we had to win. They scored early and they had confidence, but we came back stronger. We are working really hard to win, and we did. Now we continue working.”
Jackson confirmed that he intended to pass to Mykhailo Mudryk for his hat-trick goal, but noticed Mudryk was offside and scored himself instead.
Tottenham had not lost yet this season, but Chelsea dismantled them, earning a big victory. This was the big-game win that we had been threatening to pick up against Liverpool and Arsenal.
“It’s a significant win,” acknowledged Jackson.
“It’s been a difficult time. It makes our confidence go higher. We are beginning to talk as a team. We nearly did it against Arsenal. We are very happy we did it to show everybody we can.
We know what we can do. Everybody is new, we are trying to know each other, how the other guys like to play, and that’s what we are doing every day in training and now we are getting comfortable playing with each other.”
