Chelsea have received a further fitness setback after Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez withdrew from the Argentina squad with a knee problem.<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez played 78 minutes in Argentina\u2019s victory over Venezuela, a game in which he recorded more touches and passes than any other player on the pitch. Argentina\u2019s official X account announced on Saturday that he had been withdrawn from the squad because of an inflammation of the knee, adding his name to Chelsea\u2019s growing list of absentees.<\/p>\n
The midfielder was already expected to miss Argentina\u2019s second friendly with Puerto Rico, with BBC Sport\u2019s Nizaar Kinsella reporting that he would not play in that match. Given that information, an early return to west London for further assessment and treatment makes practical sense.<\/p>\n
Chelsea had entered the international break dealing with multiple fitness concerns. The squad for the club\u2019s last-gasp win over Liverpool had been weakened by absences that included Levi Colwill, Wesley Fofana, Cole Palmer and Liam Delap. In the same victory, Josh Acheampong and Beno\u00eet Badiashile also suffered fitness problems.<\/p>\n
Head coach Enzo Maresca will now be monitoring Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s situation closely ahead of the club\u2019s return to Premier League action. Chelsea travel to Nottingham Forest next in the league, and the manager will be hoping that the knee inflammation is not a significant issue after what has already been a week of unwelcome injury news.<\/p>\n
For now the club must wait for assessments following Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s return, with the immediate priority likely to be reducing inflammation and evaluating how soon the midfielder can rejoin team training without risk of further setback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez withdrew from Argentina with knee inflammation and will return to west London early.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[1134],"class_list":["post-3721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-enzo-fernandez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721","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=3721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}