Kayden Jackson has signed a new two-year contract with Ipswich Town. STUART WATSON looks at his roller-coaster journey in Suffolk.
BIG PRICE TAG
Looking back, there was undue pressure on Kayden Jackson’s shoulders when he first arrived at Portman Road.
The Blues forked out a £1.6m transfer fee (unheard of under previous owner Marcus Evans) and handed him the No.9 shirt in 2018.
“He’s got pace and an enthusiasm to his play,” sad new boss Paul Hurst. “I want him to kick on and score a lot of goals in the Championship.”
It was easy to forget that the pacey front man was stepping up two divisions from Accrington Stanley (where he’d just scored 16 goals for the champions) and that, at the age of 24, he’d spent the majority of career in non-league, having initially broken into the game via Samsung's ‘Win A Pro Contract’ competition.
Town couldn’t afford an adjustment period though.
With Martyn Waghorn (16), Joe Garner (10), David McGoldrick (8) and Bersant Celina (8) all departing that summer, the Blues had lost 70% of their goals from the previous campaign.
New boss Paul Hurst needed his clutch of lower league recruits to deliver from the off. The bold attempt at rebooting a stagnating club badly backfired. He was sacked after 15 games.
It didn’t help when late summer addition Jon Walters, brought in to provide some much-needed experience up top, soon saw his season ended by an Achilles injury.
Jackson found his chances limited under new boss Paul Lambert. He ended the season with four goals from 16 starts and 22 sub appearances.
Town finished bottom of the Championship and dropped into the third-tier for the first time since 1957.
PURPLE PATCH
It was a different story at the start of 2019/20.
You get the feeling it wasn’t Lambert’s plan to pair summer signing James Norwood with Jackson, but the duo hit it off in pre-season and forced the Scot’s hand.
Jackson looked so much more suited to playing in a front two.
He lobbed the keeper for a dramatic late winner against AFC Wimbledon at home. He started making a habit of seizing on rebounds when Luke Garbutt free-kicks were spilled by the keeper. Come the end of October he’d scored seven times for a team sitting top of the pile. Norwood had seven too.
The wheels soon came off for Town though. After the Covid curtailment of March 2020, the Blues ended up 11th when the table was decided on a points-per-game basis.
WANTED MAN
A return of 11 goals and seven assists in 2019/20 had attracted interest.
Jackson rejected a new contract. Coventry and Peterborough were linked. Bournemouth, just relegated from the Premier League, made a bid said to be in the region of £2m.
Owner Marcus Evans, desperate to see his record signing shine, rebuffed all offers.
That was in September 2020. The following month, the frontman got Covid and had to sit out the start of the long-awaited 2020/21 campaign.
Norwood, Aaron Drinan, Freddie Sears and Oli Hawkins all featured up top during another flying start to the season. Jackson didn’t get a run of starts until December.
BANISHED TO THE U23s
Town’s season was, once again, starting to hit the rocks.
Jackson was called upon for a crunch home clash with Sunderland on January 26. He was sent off after 10 minutes for a rash challenge on Bailey Wright.
The striker issued an apology after the 1-0 defeat. That wasn’t enough for furious boss Lambert, who called the tackle ‘horrendous’.
There was a potential out for everyone involved a few days later, but Huddersfield, scrambling for a striker, left their enquiry on January transfer deadline day far too late.
That left a bemused Jackson training with the U23s alongside fellow first-teamer Jon Nolan, who had voiced his displeasure at being dragged to Crewe as the 19th man.
“They’ve let the club down, they’ve let themselves down and they’ve let their team mates down,” said Lambert, clearly feeling the heat at this juncture.
Jackson took to Twitter to insist ‘my desire to win and perform for my club will never be questioned’.
SURVIVING THE CULL
Lambert was sacked at the end of February and replaced by Paul Cook. Jackson returned to the first team fold and started five of the final 13 games of the campaign as Town limped to a ninth-place finish.
The Blues took up their option to extend the striker’s contract by a further 12 months, but Cook promptly put him on the transfer list as part of his drastic ‘Demolition Man’ rebuild.
More than 20 players departed Ipswich that summer, but with no takers Jackson ended up staying on.
THE COMEBACK
Macauley Bonne and Joe Pigott arrived to contest the lone striker role. Jackson was restricted to just five cup starts in the first half of the season just gone.
And when Cook was sacked in December, the first striker recalled to the senior set-up was Norwood.
New boss Kieran McKenna promised a blank slate for everyone though and he was true to his word. Jackson was a surprise starter in the 2-0 win at AFC Wimbledon.
His real renaissance started with an impressive display as the lone striker in a 0-0 draw at MK Dons. Three goals in five games followed before his season was cruelly cut short by a hamstring injury sustained against Portsmouth.
After his impressive one goal and two assists display in a 3-0 home win over Burton, Jackson said: “I feel like a footballer again.
“I’d been out of the team for a long spell and, at times, at looked as though I would probably leave, but thankfully the gaffer has come in and given me the opportunity.
“He empowers you. I’ve not had this feeling since I was at Accrington with John Coleman when each week I went out there and felt on top of the world. Untouchable. The gaffer’s given me a bit of that feeling back.
“He (McKenna) wants me to do what I do well. Other managers in the past have concentrated on what I can’t do, rather than what I can do. That’s probably why I haven’t played at times and maybe haven’t been used to my strengths.
“He’s told me there aren’t many better in the league at playing on the shoulder and getting in behind.”
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