Abraham not disheartened by Super Cup penalty miss, targets Premier League title fight

The width of a post and the width of a boot. Those are the margins we’re dealing with. An inch to the right, and his shot at Old Trafford finds the back of the net. An inch higher or lower, and his penalty finds its way past Adrián.

Or if VAR actually enforced the rules that everyone was told about with great fanfare, and ordered a re-take after Adrián stepped off his line by an inch... (UEFA are apparently going with the more common sense interpretation of that directive, though that’s not something they told anyone *before* the game.)

But as a player who’s scored 60 goals in senior men’s professional football over the past three years — and won the penalty for Chelsea’s equalizer on Wednesday — Abraham isn’t getting too down from the first two games of the season.

In fact, he’s using them as motivation to become even better. He’s a man of goal-setting and perfection even in training after all.

“I’m always someone who believes in myself in penalties. I had a few last season and a few important ones. Unfortunately I missed one of the most important ones for Chelsea. It’s about how I react and just get my head up.

“The boys have made it feel like nothing has even happened. Everyone had their arms around me. They’ve said the best players miss, it’s something to learn from. It’s better it happened now than later on. You grow into a man and learn from it.”

Chelsea’s support of Tammy, both immediately after the miss on the pitch and in interviews and social media afterwards has been lovely to see. As Frank Lampard pointed out afterwards as well, the key takeaway should be that Tammy stood up and wanted the responsibility, which is not something we could’ve said of several others recently seen in the No.9 shirt.

But moral victories do eventually have to be followed by actual victories as well, and there’s no better time to start those than this Sunday, in the home opener against Leicester City. Whether it’s Abraham or Giroud (or Bathsuayi, even!) who starts up top, the confidence of the team is in the right place to get the first three of hopefully quite a few points this season.

“We showed glimpses of what we can do. We’re a threat, we’re good defensively and we can attack. We just have to build on it. The whole team fills me with confidence. Every training session, before every game, they always lift me. I just have to push on this season and hopefully we can be up there to fight for the title.

“We would have liked to win the final and at United but it is still early doors. There is still a long season ahead and we are still in big competitions as well. It’s about how we react now. The points on Sunday will be massive for us.”

-Tammy Abraham; source: Guardian

Onwards and upwards!

And if you think the proper response after the game was to send abuse to Tammy on social media, especially racist abuse, then please log off and go live in the middle of nowhere because you’re not fit for civilized society, let alone to be a Chelsea fan.

Thank you.

We are disgusted with the abhorrent posts we have seen on social media. Chelsea FC finds all forms of discriminatory behaviour unacceptable.

It has no place at this club and where there is clear evidence of Chelsea season ticket holders or members involved in such behaviour, we will take the strongest possible action against them.

-Chelsea FC; source: Sky

For what it’s worth — which, historically, is very little but maybe there’s real change afoot — Twitter has promised to sit down with Kick It Out to talk about this issue.

“We’ve had a bit of good news, which is that Twitter want to sit down and talk. That’s a start and what we asked for. Hopefully there will be some actions coming out of those conversations.

“The fact they have acknowledged communication from us and are willing to talk means we open up the conversation. The proof will be in the pudding.”

Here’s to a better future.

And if you see abuse on Twitter, don’t just ignore it, report it.