The manager of Chelsea football club, Frank Lampard has revealed that he will meet with his players to discuss the issue of the team’s penalty taker with them.
Since Frank Lampard took over the affairs of Chelsea in the summer of 2019, Italian midfielder Jorginho has been the team’s penalty taker. So far this season, the 28-year-old footballer has missed two spot-kicks. He has scored three out of five for Chelsea in the 2020-2021 season.
So far in his professional career, Jorginho has played 26 penalty kicks, he has scored a total of 23, and has missed a total of 3 spot-kicks. He scored most of the kicks using his “run and pause technique” where he would make a short run and then briefly stop before he would take the kick.
This technique failed on Wednesday, October 28, when Chelsea played against FK Krasnodar in the UEFA Champions League. Jorginho had the opportunity to score from the spot-kick but he missed his target in the 14th minute of the match. The kick which would have given Chelsea an early lead in the match hit the post. However, that didn’t stop the club from winning 4-0.
Jorginho’s first penalty miss of the season came against Liverpool on September 20 when he had the chance to boost Chelsea’s morale by scoring from the spot-kick but the Italian ended up missing it. The match ended 2-0 in favor of Liverpool.
These two misses have attracted a call to Frank Lampard to review Jorginho’s role as the club’s penalty taker. The talk about this became even louder after Wednesday’s Champions League match in which the club’s new signing, Timo Werner stepped up to score a spot-kick in place of Jorginho. Werner had to take the kick because the Italian midfielder had been substituted.
That’s the way @ChelseaFC ✊😊 pic.twitter.com/PpPoCulv1V
— Timo Werner (@TimoWerner) October 28, 2020
Hence, in a post-match conference on Wednesday, Frank Lampard insisted that Jorginho has a good penalty record that should be respected. He stressed that everyone can miss one or two penalties just like the Italian. The English tactician however revealed that he would discuss the issue with his squad.
“Jorginho has had an incredibly successful rate of scoring penalties in his career, particularly at Chelsea,” Lampard said.
“My feeling is when you take as many penalties as he does, there can be periods when you miss one, and sometimes there can be periods where you miss one or two. I experienced that as a player.
“I’ve got no problem at all with his style of taking them, because of the success he’s had, and Timo Werner, I know he’s very capable to take penalties as we saw.
“We have other players that can as well, so I’ll talk with the players afterward to see how we move forward. But we have good penalty takers at the club.”
Chelsea’s next engagement is against Burnley in the Premier League on October 31 after which they will host Rennes in the UEFA Champions League on November 4.
