Chelsea's hat-trick hero Noni Madueke has apologised for insulting the city of Wolverhampton on social media before his match-winning display at Molineux.
The England Under-21 winger scored three times in 15 second-half minutes in Chelsea's 6-2 win against Wolves.
He was heavily booed throughout by the home fans due to a hastily-deleted Instagram post in the early hours that described the midlands city he was staying in as s***.
"I just want to apologise to anyone that I might have offended," he said in an interview shown by Sky Sports after the game.
"It is just a human mistake, an accident. It wasn’t meant to be out on my socials like that. I’m sure Wolverhampton is a lovely town and I’m sorry.
"In terms of the boos, I expected it but it is part of the game. You have to be able to play under that sort of pressure."
Blues boss Enzo Maresca, who celebrated his first win in charge, insisted he did not know about the incident.
"To be honest I didn’t know, it’s just been mentioned to me now but I didn’t know during the game about Noni’s social post," Maresca said at his press conference.
"I judge Noni’s performance which has been fantastic, not only second half, even in the first half – the first 10 or 15 minutes he was always creating something.
"Since day one, I said he is the kind of winger I like, is working very good with us. The best thing from him was not the hat-trick but the way he defended 90 minutes, that shows everything I am asking from the players.
"I am the kind of person who trusts people and thinking people are mature enough to know what is correct and not correct. In this case Noni is mature enough to know if what he did was correct or not correct."
Madueke’s goals – all set up by Cole Palmer – came in a superb second-half display by the Blues, which was capped by former Wolves man Pedro Neto setting up Joao Felix to score on his second debut for the club.
It came after a thrilling first half which begun with Nicolas Jackson’s early opener before Matheus Cunha equalised for the hosts.
Against the run of play, Palmer nudged Chelsea back in front before Wolves scored a second equaliser through Jorgen Strand Larsen.
Mykhailo Mudryk was taken off at half-time to make way for Neto, who signed from Wolves a fortnight ago.
Asked why he brought Mudryk off, Maresca replied: "I was not happy.
"I think in some moments we can manage better situations. He was working very hard off the ball and I think that was good.
"In terms of on the ball, I expect more quality from Mudryk but he had some good moments the other day, some today, but another reason was to change and give Pedro (Neto) some minutes."
Wolves boss Gary O’Neil said: "I was just disappointed.
"It was a crazy game, we gave Chelsea so many good situations from crazy episodes that were so avoidable and we were badly punished. That spell was unrecoverable for us.
"There’s a lot we all need to look at and understand it’s unacceptable it went the way it did."
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