Still, if anyone does find themselves lying awake at night and worrying about this matter, as the news media clearly intend us to do, there is one big, over-arching principle that it might be helpful to bear in mind. It’s a cliché, yes – but the reason it’s a cliché is that it’s true: namely that, in the end, however great he may be, and however much one may love him, no player is bigger than his club. Except in the MLS, of course, where almost every player you have heard of is bigger than his club.



While we’re talking about Eden Hazard, though, I need to return to the subject of his penalty-taking. I’ve written in this space before about how anxious I tend to be made by his stand-and-strike approach, which always looks a bit precarious to me. I’ve gone so far as to say that I sometimes wish he would take a step or two – something more like a conventional run-up, just for the sake of my nerves.



Not any more. I’ve changed my feelings about it completely after reading an interview in which Neil Etheridge, the Cardiff goalkeeper, talked about the problems he experienced when facing a Hazard penalty. Etheridge (as you may have been unsettlingly aware at the time) has stopped penalties this season against Newcastle and Bournemouth, and was on a hat-trick of penalty saves at the point at which Hazard stood 12 yards away from him at Stamford Bridge a couple of Saturdays ago.

But Hazard, of course, scored and ended that run and, as Etheridge recalled it, it had a lot to do with that snapshot technique. Etheridge explained how, with Hazard standing there, right on top of the ball, he had nothing to go on, no movement to read, no time to think: it was just whistle, bang, goal. Life came on him fast.



So now I totally get it. Don’t mind me, then, Eden. On you go. Something for Riyad Mahrez to have a think about, too.

