Lyle Taylor, this season’s FA Cup top scorer, claims he has been “proven right” on Black Lives Matter and says taking a knee is “shit”
Lyle Taylor has insisted he has “no regrets” if his outspoken political beliefs, including his opposition to Black Lives Matter, have damaged his career and cost him the chance to play in the Premier League, while the Montserrat international insisted he “doesn’t have to be honest”.
The Chelmsford City striker, who is this season’s FA Cup top scorer, will be the center of attention when his National League South club host local rivals Braintree in the first round on TNT Sport on Saturday. But the former Nottingham Forest and Birmingham striker, who has a white mother and a black father, has made as many headlines for his outspokenness as he has for his goalscoring over a 17-club career.
And he still insists that “I was proven right” about Black Lives Matter and says kneeling is “shit.”
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Premier League teams took a knee at a match earlier this month in response to rising levels of online racism, but the majority of Women’s Super League teams have decided the act no longer makes sense.
Taylor then explained, “Taking a knee doesn’t change anything. What does it change? Society will never be equal for a variety of reasons.”
“Men and women are never seen as equal. Men are better in some ways, women are better in others. They can’t be equal in everything. So how can you hope for something that’s impossible? I don’t understand that.”
But the Greenwich-born striker believes his beliefs come at a price.
“My career under Chris Hughton (Forest manager from October 2020 to September 2021) was damaged because my politics didn’t align with Chris Hughton and Chris Hughton told me ‘the club supports him’,” Taylor recalled. “Well, it might have worked against me, but to be honest, I don’t care.
“I said what I felt, and it’s funny. Then I was proven right about Black Lives Matter. Their mission statement was wrong. It was founded by people who thought there was no place for a father in a nuclear family.”
“I have no regrets about how I have acted throughout my life.”
However, even after Forest were promoted to the Premier League in May 2022, with Steve Cooper replacing Hughton in the dugout by then, Taylor never made an appearance and was loaned out to Birmingham.
So, do you really have any regrets?
“What’s the point in regretting something you didn’t have at all when you tried everything you could to have it under control?” he said. “Did I earn the rights and respect that my colleagues want me to play for? Yes. Was I good enough? I don’t know, we’ll never know.
“But have you ever wished you had kept quiet? No, no. Because if I did, I wouldn’t be true to myself. I think anyone who knows me knows that if I feel that way or think that way, whatever it is, I’m going to say it.”
The eloquent Taylor then trashed the Conservatives, Labor, the Greens and Reformers all, saying: “We live in a very broken society at the moment. And all I hear is nonsense from all sides.”
So does he want to go into politics? “Maybe, but we need financial support from certain people,” he says.
“And even if I were interested in political campaigns, I don’t think being as outspoken as I am would get the support I need to campaign.”
More directly, the FA Cup derby was “sold out in 11 minutes”. Taylor, who turned down an offer from the EFL to sign an ambitious one-year deal with Chelmsford, said: “Respect was the biggest thing in signing. I made the right decision.”
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