Xabi Alonso wasted little time in making a point of authority at Chelsea, leaving Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez out of the squad for the Carabao Cup meeting with Luton Town. Asked about the decision, Alonso was clear that it came from within the club as much as from himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a decision from myself and from the club,\u201d he said to the assembled media.<\/p>\n
Chelsea still named several new faces, with Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers both starting, alongside Maxence Lacroix. Reece James wore the armband, Est\u00eav\u00e3o featured, and Danny Welbeck also appeared among the changes. Fern\u00e1ndez, however, was absent entirely, not even making the bench.<\/p>\n
Alonso expanded on the reasoning behind the omission, stressing that the choice was made with the team in mind. \u201cWe assess individually, collectively what\u2019s the best for the team, for tonight, what was better, for other players that were playing and we take the decision,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
When the subject turned to Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s response, Alonso was equally direct in his assessment. \u201cHe\u2019s a good professional,\u201d the former Real Madrid manager said. \u201cHe\u2019s training well and I have nothing to say about him. It was just a decision that we had to take, thinking about the game that we\u2019re playing tonight and we\u2019ll see for Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n
The situation around Fern\u00e1ndez has been building for months. It began in March, when the Argentine openly entertained the idea of joining Real Madrid, comments that angered then-manager Liam Rosenior and led to an internal suspension. Although Fern\u00e1ndez later returned because Chelsea needed him, the desire to move on has remained.<\/p>\n
This time, the destination appears to be Manchester City rather than Real Madrid, after the latter distanced themselves with a statement of their own. Chelsea, for their part, set a firm price of \u00a3120 million before the start of the Premier League season last Friday, but no bid arrived.<\/p>\n
Alonso\u2019s early tenure was given a boost by Chelsea\u2019s 3-2 win over rivals Fulham on Monday night, yet Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s exclusion suggests the situation is far from settled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alonso\u2019s first major selection call at Chelsea pointed to a growing uncertainty around Fern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18790,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[1066,182],"class_list":["post-18791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-carabao-cup","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791","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=18791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}