Ross Barkley has revealed he received words of encouragement from Jorginho and Willian before taking his spot-kick last night, and while he is understandably very disappointed with the outcome the midfielder is now determined to pick himself up for Sunday’s meeting with Liverpool.
Barkley reaffirmed what his manager Frank Lampard had said about him being our penalty taker when he is on the pitch, and after converting two in pre-season, as well as against Liverpool in the Super Cup shoot-out, it was a surprise to see him put his effort onto the bar and over.
‘I’m gutted I missed the penalty,’ said Barkley.
‘When I’m on the pitch I take pens, but I obviously didn’t execute it right. I felt confident. Everybody misses penalties. I take penalties every day, I scored penalties in pre-season. I have missed penalties before, it’s just one of those things.
‘We’ve got a lot of good penalty takers in the squad. On the sheet in the changing room it says I’m on penalties if I’m on the pitch, otherwise it’s Jorginho.
‘They were just encouraging me to score the goal,’ added Barkley of what Jorginho and Willian had said to him before the spot-kick.
‘They’re confident to take the penalties as well. If there was another penalty in the game I would have been confident to take the pen. You can miss penalties, it’s not the end of the world.
‘It was a disappointing night all round, a disappointing result, but we’ve got five more games in the group stage to try and win.’
Our next European fixtures are on the road, against Lille and Ajax, but before the trip to France we have three home matches in all competitions, starting with the visit of league leaders Liverpool on Sunday. Barkley believes it is an excellent opportunity to record our first success at Stamford Bridge this season.
‘We’ve just got to focus on the next game, a big game coming up, and get three points,’ stressed Barkley.
‘It’s a weird anomaly we haven’t won at home. We are going to win home games. We have a big game coming up on the weekend and hopefully we win that and start winning our home games.
‘We’re joint third, we’re not doing bad. We won on the weekend, scoring goals, we have a confident bunch of lads in the team. Every side is beatable on the day. It just comes down to hard work, putting the extra yards in, and a little bit of luck.
‘Big games bring the best out of all players,’ concluded Barkley.
‘You saw how well we performed in the Super Cup. We will perform to those levels again on Sunday and hopefully it goes our way.’