Chelsea pay the penalty as Jorginho matches Lampard with spot-kick miss

Jorginho missed the chance to make Arsenal tremble as he became the first Chelsea player since current manager Frank Lampard to fail with two penalties in a Premier League season.

The Blues midfielder had seen Tammy Abraham give his team hope by cutting Arsenal’s lead to 3-1 at Emirates Stadium, so a 90th-minute spot-kick was the chance to heap pressure on the hosts.

With plenty of stoppage time ahead, a successful penalty could have been followed by a Chelsea equaliser, but Jorginho saw his kick saved by Bernd Leno.

That eased the pressure immensely for Arsenal, and they survived to claim a much-needed win.

Watching at pitchside, Chelsea boss Lampard may have remembered his own misses from 12 yards during his playing career.

In the 2013-14 Premier League campaign, Lampard took three penalties but only converted one of those, netting in a 3-0 win at his former club West Ham.

Lampard missed from the spot but scored a free-kick in a 2-0 win over Hull City, while against Stoke City he had a penalty saved by Asmir Begovic but converted the rebound in a 3-0 victory.

Jorginho’s kick on Saturday was Chelsea’s eighth penalty against Arsenal in the Premier League and the first they have failed to convert.

Considered an expert from the spot, Jorginho has followed up five successive conversions by missing two of his last four.

This season, he has netted three from five attempts in the league.

Had he beaten Leno, Jorginho would have become the first Chelsea player to score in three consecutive Premier League appearances against Arsenal since Didier Drogba reached that mark in October 2010.

2 – Jorginho is the first Chelsea player to miss two Premier League penalties in a single season since Frank Lampard in 2013-14. Woopsy.

— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) December 26, 2020