Jackson repays Chelsea debts
No-one needed this moment more than Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson.Before the match, even Maresca said Jackson owed a "debt" to his team-mates after getting sent off in the defeat at Newcastle on 11 May, a red card that could well have cost Chelsea qualification for the Champions League.After the match, Maresca said: "This is the Nico that the team needs."He is among those who have struggled to convince the Stamford Bridge fanbase - and the club are looking to sign a striker, with Ipswich Town's Liam Delap among the targets.For Maresca, this was his chance to show the club could build a winning mentality after a season during which he has faced criticism for his style of football and a run of poor results over the winter.For the US consortium, their ownership was tarnished by 1,201 days without silverware but the moment captain Reece James lifted the Conference League trophy, the first in his captaincy, they earned valuable breathing room.Boehly was the first to go and celebrate with the team, followed reluctantly by influential Clearlake Capital duo Behdad Eghbali and Jose Feliciano.Boehly and Clearlake have not always seen eye to eye this season but this is a period of relative stability after the club decided they would stick with Maresca regardless of the result of their final two matches of the season.Chelsea beat Nottingham Forest to qualify for the Champions League and won against Betis to add silverware.But Chelsea didn't sell out their allocation in Poland, for what was the final of European club football's third-tier competition, and fans will quickly move on if it is not backed up with both progress and further success next season.Read Nizaar's full analysis here
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He adds: "At times Liam does feel very vulnerable in a strange way, and then he's also really hardened. And I think when you're working class from a place with no prospects, you're a survivalist and you'll do anything."He looks out for himself in a way that is really scary and coercive."The drama also doesn't shy away from a serious crime committed by Liam and Byron (which led to serious consequences for Lees in real life as a teenager). Lees has previously said that, "for me, personally, the much more interesting journey of this book is the class transition", having become middle class in later life, after growing up working class."I was living in a different city, I had a different accent, I had a different way of making money, shall we say, a different set of friends. I can't connect that with my life today. And a lot of it is the class thing," Lees told the Guardian in says of the drama: "The most exciting intersectionality of it is with the working class. What is that experience going to be for you if you are trans... and you are poor? What is the survivalist mechanism that exists for those people?"It's a hard watch but at no point did the humour leave, at no point did the heart leave. And that's a testament to Paris's life."In a Huffington Post interview in 2019, Lees acknowledged things were easier for her in later life."I'm probably one of the most privileged trans women in Britain. If you're a LGBTQ kid in a council estate in Manchester and you're getting bullied every time you leave the house, you feel like it's not safe to go to school, and you're seeing all of this horrible stuff in the press – how is that going to make you feel?" Ellis Howard concurs, and says of the book: "I feel like it's a real cry from the council estate."So you come out swinging as an actor because of how authentic the book is in terms of Paris's experience."Byron lives a very split existence, navigating a difficult home life with a macho father alongside a dangerous, illegal lifestyle on the get more challenging when, as an older teenager, Byron begins to transition. There is one stalwart ally in the family though, Byron's beloved granny played by Hannah Walters, who co-produced hit show Adolescence alongside husband Stephen Graham."We spoke a lot about code switching," Howard tells me. Code switching is the act of changing one's environment to fit in in certain environments."I think it really highlights the pockets of Byron's life, where Byron is allowed to be who they are and where they aren't, or where they feel comfortable and safe enough to be," Howard says."You can't do that if you just see all of the the glam and the chaos... we all have to come home, and what does that look like, and how does that feel? And I think it's incredibly pertinent for when someone is trying to figure out who they are. "When you taste authenticity, or when you collide into yourself - once you feel like that, you don't want to ever let it go."He adds that he has experienced this himself."I feel like that as a queer person. Once you've felt liberation, one never wants to walk backwards, and so to be forced to is such an awful and really draining experience, but I think one that is really important to show on television, because it then begs the question of why our society forces people to do that." The trans teen drama comes in the wake of the UK Supreme Court ruling in April this year, that a woman is defined by biological sex under equalities campaign group For Women Scotland had brought a case against the Scottish government arguing that sex-based protections should only apply to people who are born female. The Scottish government had argued in court that transgender people with a gender recognition certificate were entitled to the same sex-based protections as biological women - but it was the decision, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has issued interim guidance for England, Scotland and Wales for places such as hospitals, shops and restaurants, that says "trans women (biological men) should not be permitted to use the women's facilities". However, part of the Supreme Court judgement stressed that the law still gives protection against discrimination to transgender people. The EHRC also states that trans people should not be left without any facilities to the Supreme Court ruling, Sex Matters' Maya Forstater, said: "I think every organisation is going to have to tear up their policies and start again. It's much simpler than people have thought. There are men, there are women, there are spaces and services that are for men and women - most spaces and services. "And then there are things that are single sex – and when things are single sex, it's not the start of a negotiation."Laquarn Lewis, who plays the indefatigable Fallen Diva Lady Die in What If Feels Like For a Girl, says the show's characters are "just rebelling against how society is telling them they should be". "And that's exactly what we have to do with the recent law that's just been announced, we have to just rebel. Human rights must exist. The last thing we need to do is focus on such a small demographic who are a minority and just ostracise them and make them feel targeted and become victims."Howard is hopeful the show will be something of a beacon."It's a really scary time in our culture, politically, and so hopefully what the show does is provides relief, but also community. Because I think we need community. We need structure and safety now more than ever."What It Feels Like For A Girl will be on BBC iPlayer and BBC Three from 3 June.
