Four games, four goals and one scalp the size of Manchester City. Nicolas Jackson has been named EA SPORTS Premier League Player of the Month for October 2026, and the Aston Villa striker did plenty to earn it.
The centrepiece was a match-winning brace in Villa’s 2-1 victory over City, the kind of result that gets a month remembered whatever else happens around it. He also scored against Brentford and Fulham, which matters. A striker who only turns up for the big occasion gets labelled a flat-track bully in reverse. A striker who scores in the big game and the routine ones is simply a centre-forward doing the job.
A Villa first in over a decade
The award carries some history. Jackson is the first Villa player to win it since Christian Benteke in April 2015, a gap that says a lot about how long the club spent drifting before Unai Emery arrived and turned them into a side that expects to be in these conversations. A Villa striker being the best player in the division for a month is no longer a novelty, but it had been a very long time coming.
It also puts Jackson in specific company. He is the fourth Senegalese player to win the award, a list that includes Sadio Mané. That is a heavy name to be placed beside, and Mané set a standard for what a Senegalese forward can be in England: relentless, decisive and consistently productive. Jackson’s game is different, more direct and more about running the channels and attacking space, but the comparison shows how far he has come.
From Chelsea question mark to Emery’s focal point
Jackson, now 25, arrived in English football from Villarreal and spent his Chelsea years as a forward whose movement and pace always looked promising while his finishing drew debate. His time at Stamford Bridge was never short of talking points. Since his move to Villa, the conversation has turned towards output.
That is where Emery comes in. The manager has a reputation for giving players a clear job within a tightly drilled system, and Jackson looks like a striker who has been handed exactly that. Instead of being asked to be everything at once, he is asked to attack the box and finish what Villa create. October suggests he is doing it.
For Senegal, a country that has produced a steady line of elite attackers, a Premier League Player of the Month award from a striker in form is the sort of thing that gets noticed. Whether that turns into a bigger role with the national team is a question for the coaching staff, but it is hard to argue against four goals in four games against that opposition.
Villa supporters will simply want the run to carry on after the international break. For now, though, the question in the headline has an answer, and for once it is a Villa striker who is the best player in the league for the month.
