Ross Barkley will continue to be Chelsea’s designated penalty taker despite last night’s miss in their 1-0 defeat to Valencia.
The 25-year-old said that he is in charge of spot kicks after Willian and Jorginho both showed an interest in taking the attempt which the former Everton midfielder drove off the crossbar.
“Disappointing night, I'm gutted I missed the penalty,” Barkley said. “When I’m on the pitch, I’ll take the penalty. Obviously I didn’t execute it right but everybody misses penalties. I didn’t score the goal but I felt confident.
“If there was another penalty in the game I would have been confident of taking it. You can miss penalties. It's not the end of the world. We've got five more group stage games to go that we're aiming to win. Today just didn't go our way, it's disappointing really.”
Asked to detail the exchange with Willian and Jorginho, Barkley added: “We've got a lot of good penalty-takers in the squad. On a sheet in the changing room it says I'm on penalties when I'm on the pitch, otherwise it's Jorginho.
“All players feel confident of taking penalties but we can all miss them. It's more 'good luck with the penalty' type of thing, encouraging me. They would have been willing to take it as well but I felt confident.”
Frank Lampard confirmed separately that Barkley is first-choice instead of Jorginho, who was last year’s designated taker and also scored from 12 yards in extra-time of the Super Cup defeat to Liverpool last month when Barkley was not on the pitch.
“Ross is the penalty taker, was in pre-season and scored a couple,” the head coach said. “He has been when he started, was when he came on today and he missed it. That is the clear story.
“I don’t know what the conversation was, but Jorginho and Willian were the takers on the pitch, when Ross comes on he becomes the penalty taker, and he missed it.”
