Enzo Maresca rejected the idea that Alejandro Garnacho was kept on the bench at Old Trafford because of the crowd reaction. The winger warmed up on the touchline and was greeted by boos and chants, but Maresca said the decision to hold him back followed events on the pitch rather than the noise from the stands.<\/p>\n
Garnacho did not start and was preparing to enter in the second half when a sequence of changes unfolded. In the 64th minute Tyrique George replaced Marc Cucurella while Malo Gusto was brought on for Fofana after the defender asked to be substituted. With the five substitutes already used, Garnacho sank back into his seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,” the Italian shrugged postgame, “he was ready to go on, and then Wes asked for a change.\u201d Maresca also conceded that \u201cthe idea was to give Garnacho minutes\u201d but that Fofana\u2019s fatigue after a lengthy spell out with injury concerns prompted an alternative plan. The manager did not directly explain why George was chosen over Garnacho for that slot.<\/p>\n
Chelsea suffered early disruption when goalkeeper Robert S\u00e1nchez was dismissed, forcing the introduction of backup Filip J\u00f6rgensen for Est\u00eav\u00e3o. At the same stoppage Maresca took Pedro Neto off and replaced him with Tosin Adarabioyo, a double substitution completed within seven minutes that became the quickest such change in Premier League history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why we changed Pedro and Est\u00eav\u00e3o was because they attack with the five players always, and we defend with the four,\u201d Maresca said, describing the switch to a back five after Neto\u2019s withdrawal. \u201cWe can defend with the four when we are 11 vs 11, but 11 against them, I think we need to defend on the width, so we decided to go with the back five, this is the reason why.\u201d<\/p>\n
That reshuffle did not prevent Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro from scoring before half-time. A red card for United\u2019s Brazilian midfielder levelled the numbers, but Chelsea only managed one goal in reply in a 2\u20131 defeat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca said Garnacho was ready but a tactical change and fatigue altered Chelsea’s subs Saturday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,969],"tags":[227,342,939],"class_list":["post-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-premier-league","tag-alejandro-garnacho","tag-bruno-fernandes","tag-casemiro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968","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=2968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}