Will Mykhailo Mudryk and Nicolas Jackson make it at Chelsea?

A look at the early stages of their times at the club, what they've done well, what they must improve and whether they will make it.

In Chelsea’s current squad, most of the players are either unanimously rated, or most agree that they are not quite good enough. 

There are a couple of players who don’t fit into either category and the jury is still out on them. Those players are Mykhailo Mudryk and Nicolas Jackson. 

Mudryk is closing in on being at the club for a year whilst Jackson has only played half a season with us, so writing them off already would be very harsh, but some people rightly have concerns if they’ll make it at Chelsea. 

We have to remember that Mudryk and Jackson’s contracts both end in 2031 so we still have years for them to show their worth. Provided we don’t make any rash decisions on them, time is on their side. 

Both of them have shown, even if in glimpses, that they have all the tools to succeed at Chelsea but the club must give them time and allow Pochettino to coach them. 

Against Brighton last Sunday, I genuinely noticed that Mudryk seems to be pressing more smartly and that Jackson’s off-the-ball runs looked much improved. That will directly be down to Pochettino’s coaching and I’m glad to see that some of the fundamentals are improving with these two young attackers. 

Looking specifically at Mudryk’s start to life at Chelsea, we all expected more output than the two goals and two assists he’s delivered for us so far but there are reasons why he hasn’t produced more for us. 

On the pitch, many of his appearances have been small cameos, making it difficult for him to get a run of form going and contribute more to the team. Last season, he didn’t show much on the pitch but after a good pre-season and a bit more time adapting to life in England, he’s started to make things happen on the pitch this season. 

He really gets me off my seat and although some things he tries in games don’t always come off, I am happy to see him try to take players on and be the man who takes the game by the scruff of the neck. 

In six starts this season, he’s produced decent performances in every one. I know these rating apps aren’t always perfect but they’re a good barometer to gauge roughly how a player has performed. He’s consistently around the 7/10 mark and with more game time and more time on the training pitch with Poch, I know those ratings will go up. 

Off the pitch, there are a lot of factors as to why we’ve not seen the best of Mudryk. Firstly, he left Ukraine which is obviously under Russian invasion and left behind a lot of close friends and family. He is a human being and is clearly going to be scared and have a lot on his mind.

Another area that will no doubt play on his mind is the addest pressure of his price tag and being part of a massive and public transfer saga.

We swooped in and stole him from under Arsenal’s noses and ended up paying £62m with add-ons that could take it to £88m. Paying that sort of money for a relatively unknown entity is always going to add pressure on a young player. 

I don’t have doubts about Mudryk at all. He is going to be good for Chelsea. I would like to see him contribute more in front of goal and he will provided he gets regular starts in our side. 

He will be adapting more and more to England and getting to know his teammates better each day. Pairing that with Pochettino’s mentorship and he will be a vital player for us in years to come. 

Nicolas Jackson is a puzzling player to me. Some weeks he looks absolutely brilliant and almost unplayable and others he frustrates the life out of me. 

If you look at his start to life at Chelsea you see 7 goals in 16 games and have to admit that it is a very decent goal return, especially when you consider that he doesn’t take penalties, he’s just come into a new league and he’s had to be our main source of goals as Christopher Nkunku has been injured and Armando Broja has been steadily coming back from injury. 

There is no doubt that like most strikers, he’s a confidence player. You could see in his interview after his hat-trick against Spurs that he looked visibly more confident and since then he’s grabbed a goal against Man City and an assist against Brighton. 

However, there are some concerning parts of his game as of now, most notably his discipline. He has been a yellow card magnet this season and he’s already landed himself a ban and tops the Premier League yellow card list. 

I love that he fights for the badge, but most of his cards have come from silly things like kicking the ball away, waving imaginary cards at the referee and standing directly in front of opposition free kicks. 

Like Mudryk, Jackson can certainly become a huge player for the club, but there is one thing that could put a spanner in the works for the Senegalese forward. 

It’s extremely well documented that we will go all out to sign one of Ivan Toney or Victor Osimhen. If that happens, Nicolas Jackson will likely find himself as a backup. How he responds to that is crucial to whether he makes it at Chelsea. 

I’m sure he will keep working hard and will seize his opportunity but there is always a chance that he won’t take to being a second-choice striker, especially as he’s tasted six months of first-choice action. 

Both Jackson and Mudryk are in the very early days of their Chelsea careers and I hope that they will become big names in Chelsea’s illustrious history.

They both have the tools but now it’s a wait to see whether, with time and coaching, they reach the heights of their potential. 

By Will Reyner