Chelsea suffered a heavy afternoon at Stamford Bridge as Manchester City secured a 3-0 victory. Both teams struggled in the first half, but City took control after the interval and converted superiority into three second-half goals.<\/p>\n
Nico O\u2019Reilly opened the scoring, ghosting away from Andrey Santos to head home from close range. Marc Gu\u00e9hi then fired home a right-footed effort before J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku made it 3-0 after a mistake by Mois\u00e9s Caicedo. Efforts from Marc Cucurella and Cole Palmer were not enough to prevent Gianluigi Donnarumma from keeping a clean sheet in City\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n
The match was overshadowed by manager Liam Rosenior\u2019s decision to drop Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez. Rosenior\u2019s response\u2014in line with the club\u2019s hierarchy\u2014was to internally \u2018suspend\u2019 the Blues\u2019 vice-captain for two games. Fern\u00e1ndez had been left out against Port Vale in the FA Cup and was also omitted for this fixture while Chelsea are engaged in a Champions League qualification battle and Manchester City hunt a ninth Premier League title.<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s season figures underline his influence. He has scored eight goals and leads Chelsea in expected goals (10.42), chances from open play (46) and through balls (21). He ranks highly in the Premier League among midfielders in these categories.<\/p>\n
Chelsea offered little in the first 45 minutes, recording an xG of just 0.25, five shots and one on target. Est\u00eav\u00e3o returned on the right wing but looked off the pace. City dominated possession in the second half, restricting Chelsea to under 30 percent possession early after the break and limiting passes into the final third.<\/p>\n
Individual ratings reflected a disappointing display. Robert S\u00e1nchez had little chance with the goals. Defensively, Wesley Fofana and Jorrel Hato were below par. Mois\u00e9s Caicedo\u2019s error led to the third. Cole Palmer showed moments of quality but the side lacked the presence and steel that Fern\u00e1ndez has provided all season. Subs including Alejandro Garnacho and Rom\u00e9o Lavia made little impact after their introductions.<\/p>\n
Match stats: possession 36% to 64%; xG 1.14 to 1.89; total shots 12 to 18; shots on target 3 to 8; pass accuracy 83% to 91%; fouls 10 to 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester City dominated Chelsea 3-0 at Stamford Bridge; Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez was omitted for two games. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,969],"tags":[1505,1304,1047],"class_list":["post-11593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-premier-league","tag-accountability","tag-benching","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11593","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=11593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}