Chelsea fans won’t be happy as Striker’s real reason for wanting penalty revealed
A report in the Daily Mail today claims to know why Nicolas Jackson got into such a row with teammate Noni Madueke as both tried to steal the ball and take a penalty with the Blues already 4-0 up against Everton.
It’s caused real ripple effects, with manager Mauricio Pochettino firing back at the media after they spent the whole post-game presser asking him about it. The coach was just as furious at the pair, and fans are desperately unhappy to see such selfish behaviour from the superstars who have disappointed in so many games this season.
The reason Jackson was suddenly so keen was that, apparently, he wants to break Didier Drogba’s record of 16 goals in his debut season. Jackson has 13, so scoring the spot kick on Monday would have put him 2 away from a tie.
We’re not sure what Noni’s motivation was.
A mad reason to cause an incident
We’re sure that Jackson would love to break Drogba’s record, but it’s hardly a big enough reason to cause all this fuss. There should be plenty of chances for him to do it without penalties – he had already scored in this game, for goodness’ sake.
What we really worry about is that the embarrassing scenes are going to taint Chelsea fans’ feelings towards the pair. It’s hard to forget the images from the incident, the pure childishness really sticks in one’s mind. Even for footballers, this was a particular low.
Jackson at least has a whole season of working hard and showing flashes of real ability to fall back on. Fans will forgive any players almost anything if they play well. Madueke has a lot less credit in the bank.
But finding out this trivial goal record may have been part of Jackson’s motivation makes us more disappointed in what happened, not less.
