Lyle Taylor has ‘no regrets’ if Black Lives Matter stance stopped Premier League career

Lyle Taylor is the FA Cup’s top scorer this season insisted he has been “proven right” about Black Lives Matter and states taking the knee is “a load of rubbish”

Lyle Taylor insists he has “no regrets” if his outspoken political beliefs – including opposing Black Lives Matter – harmed his career and cost him the chance to play in the Premier League, the Monserrat international insisting: “I don’t care to be honest.”

The Chelmsford City striker, the top scorer in the FA Cup this season, will be the star attraction when his National League South club host local rivals Braintree in the first round on TNT Sports on Saturday. Yet the former Nottingham Forest and Birmingham striker, who has a white mother and black father, has made as many headlines for his candour as his goalscoring during his 17-club career.

And even now he claims: “I have been proven right” about Black Lives Matter and states that taking the knee is “a load of rubbish”.

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Premier League teams made the knee gesture at fixtures earlier this month after a rise in online racism while the majority of Women’s Super League teams decided the action was no longer meaningful.

And Taylor explained: “Taking the knee isn’t going to change anything. What does it change? Society is never going to be equal for various reasons.

“Men and women are never going to be viewed as equal. Men are better at some things. Women are better at some things. We can’t be equal in every aspect. So how can we want something that is an impossibility? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

But the Greenwich-born striker believes his convictions have come at a price.

“It harmed my career under Chris Hughton (Forest boss from October 2020 to Sept 2021) because my politics didn’t align with Chris Hughton and Chris Hughton said to me, the club stands with him,” Taylor recalled. “So yeah, that may have worked against me but I don’t care to be honest.

“I said what I felt and it’s funny because I’ve since been proven to be right about Black Lives Matter. Their mission statement was wrong. It was founded by people who saw no place for the father in the nuclear home.

“I have no regrets on how I, how I’ve conducted myself through my life.”

But even after Forest were promoted to the Premier League in May 2022, by which time Steve Cooper had replaced Hughton in the dugout, Taylor never appeared and was loaned out to Birmingham.

So really no regrets?

“What’s the point of me regretting something that I tried everything I could do to have control over and didn’t have any control over,” he said. “Did I earn the right and the respect of my peers for them to want me to play? Yes. Was I good enough? I don’t know, we’ll never know.

“But do I ever think I should have kept quiet? No, no. Because if I had kept quiet, I wouldn’t be being true to myself. I think everyone who knows me knows that if I feel it or I think it, I’m going to say it, whatever it might be.”

The eloquent Taylor then shredded all the Conservatives, Labour, the Green Party and Reform and said: “We live in a society that is very broken at the moment. And all I’m hearing is just nonsense from all sides.”

So would he like to go into politics? “Maybe so but you have to have the monetary backing of certain people,” he said.

“And I don’t believe being as outspoken as I am will garner me the support that you would need to run a political campaign, even if I was interested in it.”

More immediately is an FA Cup derby which “sold out in 11 minutes”. Taylor, who turned down offers from the EFL to sign a one-year contract at ambitious Chelmsford, said: “Respect was the biggest thing in signing. I made the right decision.”

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