Chelsea\u2019s European exit left the club with clear on-field problems and a new layer of uncertainty after Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez offered a terse assessment of his immediate plans. The Blues were beaten 8\u20132 on aggregate by Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League round of 16, a tie settled by goals from Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Bradley Barcola and Senny Mayulu.<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez, the club\u2019s vice-captain, was asked about his future and responded: \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cI don\u2019t know\u2014right now, I\u2019m thinking here. There are eight games left [in the Premier League ] and the FA Cup and then there\u2019s the World Cup and then we\u2019ll see, we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
The midfielder\u2019s sombre mood followed a night in which Mamadou Sarr\u2019s early mistake allowed Kvaratskhelia a simple opening goal after six minutes, and Barcola rifled an uncontested strike into Robert S\u00e1nchez\u2019s top corner before the 15-minute mark. Rosenior made significant changes around the hour, withdrawing Cole Palmer, Jo\u00e3o Pedro and Fern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n
Asked about Fern\u00e1ndez\u2019s comments, Rosenior said: \u201cI haven\u2019t seen that. It\u2019s hard for me to speak on speculation after a game,\u201d he mused. \u201cI need to focus right now on the most important things, which is making sure we get a result against Everton on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosenior also reflected on the scale of the defeat. \u201cWhen you go two goals down so early and five goals down on aggregate, it\u2019s a really, really difficult evening,\u201d Rosenior sighed. \u201cWe wanted to obviously put up more of a fight than what we did. Credit to PSG. Their possession play was really, really top in the game and over the two legs they deserve to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed on the wider impact, he added: \u201cThat\u2019s my job,\u201d he continued when probed on how he\u2019ll prevent the past seven days from defining Chelsea \u2019s season. \u201cHow I go about that is how we always go about it. We need to be resilient. We need to make sure we go to Everton with an organization, with a freshness and intensity in our team because we want to be in this competition next season … if we perform how I know we can, we can get there without the individual mistakes that we\u2019re making at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fern\u00e1ndez has started more games than anybody during 2025\u201326 and logged the most minutes across all competitions. He is enjoying his best goal return with 12 in all competitions, eight in the Premier League, as Chelsea fight to secure Champions League qualification for next season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez’s short answer has left Chelsea and Liam Rosenior with serious questions about future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1304,1047,1089],"class_list":["post-8929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-benching","tag-champions-league","tag-chelsea-struggles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8929","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=8929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}