ONLY at Chelsea. To the rear of a Main Stand concourse at Stamford Bridge, the luxuriant Londoners have installed a rack of hi-tech games consoles inviting supporters to turn their backs on the real action and live out their own fantasies in pixel form.
But had Jermaine Beckford been spotted early Saturday afternoon furiously bashing those buttons in an attempt to find inspiration, it would have been no surprise.
After all, the striker’s dream of making the grade in the Premier League has threatened to turn into a nightmare.
Having belatedly broken his duck with a late equaliser against Bolton Wanderers, the former Leeds United man has subsequently become the subject of mockery after a critical miss at Sunderland was followed by his succession of spurned opportunities at home to West Bromwich Albion last week.
Beckford, though, will have the biggest smile this morning as both he and Everton answered the call of manager David Moyes to respond in the best possible fashion to their Goodison embarrassment seven days earlier.
A point at the faltering champions was the least Moyes’s men deserved as they restored more than just their pride with a battling performance. Belief, too, will surely come flooding back given the manner in which the visitors fought from behind to ultimately outplay their more heralded hosts.
Chief beneficiary will be Beckford. His mixture of delight and relief was obvious as he charged towards the jubilant away end having emerged from the bench to head Everton’s equaliser with just four minutes of normal time remaining.
The 26-year-old remains very much a rough diamond – witness his overly-ambitious attempt to score a second shortly afterwards with two team-mates screaming for a pass – but he possesses that untrainable knack of being in the right place at the right time, a trait of all successful goalscorers.
And while one goal will not be enough to win over the doubters, the forward has shown that, given his strikes for Leeds at Old Trafford and White Hart Lane that helped earn a move to Everton, he is a man unfazed by the grand stage.
