Lyle Taylor has been undoubtedly one of the driving forces this season with his 16 goals and 8 assists shooting the Addicks into the play-off which is more or less guaranteed for us now as we sit 5th and 12 points clear of Peterborough United with just 6 games to play.
Unfortunately, Taylor has been subject to racial abuse after the last couple games, mainly through the home fixture against Bradford City where a Bradford fan from a Twitter account sent Taylor a series of Banana emojis after the Charlton striker slotted home a 19th-minute winner against the Bantams at The Valley.
Now the latest case involves a Plymouth Argyle fan who has since apologised for his comments against Taylor where he was saying that Lyle Taylor was “asking for it” after celebrating his goal in front of the Green Army as he headed home just 1 minute and 30 seconds after Dillion Phillips’ game-changing save.
With the latest one it didn’t involve actual racism, but it was offensive to Taylor none the less, going to a point saying that Taylor deserves the racism being given to him is very harsh to say the least. We all know Lyle Taylor has a great personality, always has time for the fans and he does a bit of charity work most notably with Cancer research where he dyed his hair pink for the entire month of October, wearing pink boots to go with it.
So how does Lyle deserve this? He is obviously a great person to have at the club in personality and football wise. The Teamargyle account was referring to him celebrating in front of the Argyle support after his goal, but with a moment of sheer joy could you really contain yourself especially after being on the back foot beforehand. Since the post went up teamargyle has miraculously lost its entire following and has now got 0followers on Instagram which goes to show there is no room for racism in football. Even though we beat Argyle 2-0 on Saturday they still stood by us in showing that they support Lyle and KickItOut.
Lyle Taylor spoke with Louis Mendez of Charlton Live and the South London Press and this is what he had to say…
🗣📝 Lyle Taylor: Until you've been on the receiving end of racist abuse, you won't understand how it feels
READ ➡️ https://t.co/Df4s62Qi8j #CAFC pic.twitter.com/qjepxb42xF
— Louis Mendez (@LouisMend) April 8, 2019
“I’ve had conversations with people this week where they’d likened racism to other things, I mean no disrespect but unless you’ve been racially abused, you won’t understand how it feels. So, unless you’ve been racially abused, I’d rather you not make comment on what other people go through. If somebody gets the mick taken out of them because they’ve got a stutter or if somebody walks with a limp, it’s not the same.”
Taylor continued.
“Yes, we need to focus on the positives and positives are that 99.9% of football fans in this country are not racist. But we don’t need to worry about the 99.9% because they’re not the ones who are causing the issue. From here on in, we have to do everything we can to highlight this and to make an issue of it. If we make an issue of it, hopefully that way people will start realising that their behaviour, if that is their behaviour,is just way beyond the pale.”
He’s right we do need to focus on the positives. I know it can be hard to sway away from something like this when it does happen and sometimes it is a hell of a lot harder to ignore it. Personally, travelling home and away I have never experienced any racism towards myself or anyone else, but it’s obvious it’s still happening. It has died down a lot since the days of the 70s, 80s and 90s, however it is still there and with people like Lyle supporting the KickItOut campaign hopefully within a short space of time, it can be eliminated from the game altogether. But it’s football that needs to stick together to get rid of this. There is no need for it so let’s all KICKITOUT!
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