Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca did not attend the postmatch press conference after Tuesday’s 2\u20132 draw with Bournemouth, asking assistant Willy Caballero to speak after feeling unwell. The decision followed Maresca’s substitution of Cole Palmer around the hour mark, a move that drew audible frustration from the stands and a chant of, “You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing.” <\/p>\n
Caballero told reporters why he was representing the manager. “He didn\u2019t feel well the last two days,” he said. “He had a temperature two days ago, he did do the last two sessions because he wanted to prepare the team for this game. But after the game, he went to the changing room and he asked me to replace him because he didn\u2019t feel well. That\u2019s the only thing I can tell you.” <\/p>\n
On Maresca’s approach to his work, Caballero added: “He\u2019s dealing well because he\u2019s very professional. He invests a lot of hours every single day, even though the last two days he was feeling bad. He is an example for me and for all of the staff.” <\/p>\n
Palmer, recently declared fit to play 90 minutes after overcoming a lengthy groin injury, has instead been substituted in both of his last two outings, lasting 72 minutes against Aston Villa and 63 minutes against Bournemouth. Against Villa he was visibly unhappy when withdrawn; this time he left the pitch without public protest and applauded the fans. “Of course, any supporter wants to have their best players on the pitch and we want to have the best players on the pitch as well,” Caballero reflected. “But Cole is coming from a long injury so in this case, we need to find the right substitutions to go for the game and also to take care of the health of our players, because we want to have them for the long period and for the rest of the season in every single game.” <\/p>\n
The positive for Chelsea is that Palmer does not appear to have aggravated his injury and should be free to start the next outing against Manchester City on Jan. 4. The club will also be without Mois\u00e9s Caicedo after his suspension, a decision Caballero questioned. “We are very frustrated because it was the first foul of the game and it was close to us,” he said. “We looked at the foul more than once and it doesn\u2019t look like a yellow. But it\u2019s done now so we\u2019re going to miss a very important player. We will need to start to think who will be the player that replaces Moi and, of course it\u2019s a big loss, but it\u2019s the same as when we miss Cole, when we miss Liam [Delap], when we miss any player, because all of them are very important for us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca withdrew unwell; Caballero addressed Palmer substitutions, Caicedo suspension and squad care<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,969],"tags":[1304,1140,319],"class_list":["post-5556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-premier-league","tag-benching","tag-caicedo","tag-cole-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5556","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=5556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}