Nicolas Jackson, a forward for Chelsea, has a straightforward message for anyone attempting to criticize him this season.
Simply put, he is asserting that his detractors lack knowledge of the sport and that he is exclusively listening to Mauricio Pochettino, his manager at Chelsea, who does.
Quite frankly, Jackson has been inconsistent this season; therefore, if I am offering criticism with those comments, I suppose I also lack football knowledge!
Notwithstanding this, his goal-scoring statistics are respectable, and in all honesty, what else do you need from your striker but to be putting up scores?
A return of this nature for a striker joining a club after joining a new league and a league as competitive as the Premier League is quite satisfactory.
Therefore, he should simply accept that in the modern game, critics and admirers will invariably offer their opinions, and that this is only exacerbated by the advent of social media. Things are the way they 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.”
