\n <\/aside>\n <\/p>\n
Chelsea have decided to recall Nicolas Jackson to the first team after Xabi Alonso was named as manager. They will be taking the striker with them on their tough pre-season tour of Australia and Asia. The Spanish boss clearly wants to see more of the 25-year-old before deciding what to do with him at Stamford Bridge.<\/p>\n
The Senegal international is a little down at the moment as he was in the shadow of Harry Kane throughout the entire 2025\/26 season while on loan at Bayern Munich. He played 34 times for the Bavarians, netting 11 goals and assisting on four more, but the German champions didn\u2019t want to exercise their \u00a356 million buy-out option, and he returned to west London.<\/p>\n
Jackson\u2019s problems are compounded by the fact that Chelsea\u2019s attacking ranks are getting fuller. He must now share the spotlight with the likes of Joao Pedro, Liam Delap, Marc Guiu and Emmanuel Emegha. However, the forward\u2019s impressive performance in his first few seasons at Stamford Bridge is a strong indicator of his long-lasting pedigree.<\/p>\n
Between 2023 and 2025, he appeared in 81 games, netting 30 goals and adding 12 assists, establishing himself as a dependable striker for the Blues.<\/p>\n
Chelsea Begin Clandestine Operations Ahead of Summer Tour<\/h2>\n Xabi Alonso\u2019s side have been training hard at Cobham ahead of their cross-continental trip and have two friendlies behind closed doors against lower league teams on the schedule. The Blues are due to play Crawley Town this Saturday, followed by Bromley the following Thursday. Both games will be played in secret, only in front of the coaches\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n
Alonso and his crew will start a trip that will add a huge number of miles to the clock and take them to Sydney. The tour will begin in Sydney, Australia, with the Western Sydney Wanderers on July 28 and Tottenham Hotspur on August 1.<\/p>\n
The travelling Londoners will then head across the continent, facing tough opponents after tough opponents to see how strong they are. They leave for Hong Kong on 5 August to play Juventus. On 8 August, they travel to Jakarta to play AC Milan, and on 9 August, they conclude their lengthy trip with a game against Johor Darul Ta\u2019zim in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
Alonso has been fortunate to have had plenty of time to prepare, despite a number of his charges involved in recent World Cup activities. So the next few weeks will be vital in determining whether Jackson can turn his fortunes around and convince his doubting new manager he should be there.<\/p>\n\n <\/aside>\n \n\t<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea have decided to recall Nicolas Jackson to the first team after Xabi Alonso was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}