Chelsea manager Liam Rosenior has confirmed vice-captain Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez will be unavailable for the club\u2019s next two fixtures after a series of public comments about his future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke with Enzo an hour ago,\u201d Rosenior told assembled media on Friday ahead of the FA Cup quarterfinal against Port Vale. \u201cAs a football club, with me as part of the decision, he won\u2019t be available for tomorrow\u2019s game or Manchester City next Sunday.<\/p>\n
Date<\/p>\n
Opponent<\/p>\n
Competition<\/p>\n
Saturday, April 4<\/p>\n
Port Vale (H)<\/p>\n
FA Cup quarterfinal<\/p>\n
Sunday, April 12<\/p>\n
Man City (H)<\/p>\n
Premier League<\/p>\n
Rosenior stressed the choice was collective. \u201cIn terms of the decision,\u201d the 41-year-old outlined, \u201cit\u2019s not all about me, or the sporting directors, the ownership, the players, we are aligned in our decision.\u201d The two-game sanction removes Chelsea\u2019s second-top scorer and leading assist provider for a vital Premier League meeting with Manchester City on April 12.<\/p>\n
The manager connected the punishment to a turbulent spell of results and public remarks. \u201cA lot of this stems from a difficult 10 days,\u201d Rosenior said, pointing to an end-of-March run that included elimination from the Champions League by Paris Saint-Germain and defeats to Newcastle United and Everton. Chelsea\u2019s 8\u20132 aggregate defeat to PSG on March 17 preceded Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s repeated, ambiguous reply to transfer rumours: \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a \u201cgreat conversation\u201d with Rosenior Fern\u00e1ndez described himself as \u201cvery comfortable\u201d at Stamford Bridge, but while on international duty he spoke more openly. In an interview for Avirales he said: \u201cI\u2019d like to live in Spain, I really like Madrid; it reminds me of Buenos Aires,\u201d and \u201cPlayers live where they want. I\u2019d live in Madrid. I get by in English, but I\u2019d be more comfortable in Spanish.\u201d Those comments appear to have been decisive for the club.<\/p>\n
Rosenior left the door open for Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s return after the sanction. \u201cEnzo, firstly, as a character, a person and a player, I have the utmost respect,\u201d Rosenior gushed, adding there has been \u201cno lack of commitment\u201d in his performances. \u201cHe\u2019s frustrated because he wants us to be successful. \u201c… The door is not closed on Enzo. It\u2019s a sanction. You have to protect the culture and in terms of that, a line was crossed.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the wider squad, Rosenior said: \u201cI had a fantastic chat with Marc yesterday, half an hour in my office,\u201d and: \u201cMy disappointment in Marc\u2019s interview was where it went to, I think he should\u2019ve spoke to us first about how he was feeling. As a football club, we know we need to improve. We know what we\u2019re going to do in the summer to achieve those objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosenior bans Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez for two games after comments on his future and preference for Madrid. .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1505,1304],"class_list":["post-10627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-accountability","tag-benching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}