Just when you thought the week could not get any worse for Chelsea head coach Liam Rosenior, influential midfielder Enzo Fernandez drops a rather large hint that he is considering his future at the club.
It is the last thing Rosenior needed after seeing his Chelsea team beaten 3-0 at home by Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday to be knocked out of the Champions League at the last-16 stage 8-2 on aggregate, the joint-heaviest defeat in the club’s history. Fans made their feelings clear by booing the players, booing his substitutions and, perhaps worst of all, leaving en masse when Senny Mayulu added a third for the visitors soon after the hour mark.
To put what Fernandez has done into further perspective, the 25-year-old was Chelsea captain on the night and is expected to be for most of their remaining games this season due to first-choice Reece James being unavailable because of a hamstring injury.
If the Argentina international, who joined for a then British record £106million ($133m) from Benfica in January 2023, is having doubts about where he will be playing in 2026-27, then Rosenior’s task of turning things around and lifting a dejected dressing room has just got a lot harder. Rosenior needs Fernandez on his side, not thinking about whether he wants to play for a different one.
Even by Chelsea’s standards, the amount of things that have gone wrong since the 74th minute of the first leg last Wednesday is extraordinary and all have contributed to the alarming negative momentum the club’s campaign is taking. It is some challenge but here’s an attempt at a quick recap.
Rosenior’s decision to pick Filip Jorgensen over Robert Sanchez backfired at the Parc des Princes because the keeper was to blame for Vitinha putting PSG 3-2 ahead. The Champions League holders went on to win 5-2, while winger Pedro Neto made headlines for pushing a ball boy late on.
Neto’s lack of discipline after getting a red card at Arsenal earlier this month resulted in the Football Association handing him an additional one-game ban on Friday, which ruled him out of the Premier League match against Newcastle United the following day. Meanwhile, upbeat comments about the club’s progress made by a Chelsea director off the record to various fan representatives several weeks ago were leaked on social media.
Chelsea then lost to Newcastle (1-0) for just the second time at Stamford Bridge since the Premier League began, but it was still not the most regrettable event of the evening.
Chelsea’s pre-match huddle over the centre spot, a practice they have been doing since late January, turned into a farce, with referee Paul Tierney stuck in the middle of it.
Rosenior invited further negative scrutiny in the post-match press conference by saying his players were there to “respect the ball”. It was also late on in this match that James, who had just signed a new six-year contract, suffered a hamstring injury which will keep him out for several weeks.
Preparations for the second leg against PSG were overshadowed on Monday with the news that the Premier League had issued a record fine and suspended transfer ban for flouting rules during the Roman Abramovich era. In an unrelated case, Chelsea were also fined for breaches committed by a former academy employee and are restricted from certain academy signings for nine months.
Malo Gusto, Chelsea’s other regular option at right-back in the absence of James, was then deemed too ill to face PSG. As happened prior to the first game, team news was leaked to the French media several hours before the match, this time detailing that Wesley Fofana had been dropped to the bench.
Chelsea ended the game with 10 men because Trevoh Chalobah, who has the most appearances out of all their defenders this season, was carried off on a stretcher with four minutes remaining.
Trevoh Chalobah suffered an injury in a tackle with Achraf Hakimi (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Got all that? Essentially, anything that could go wrong has gone wrong. After two months in the job, this really does feel like the official ‘welcome to Chelsea Liam’. The initial niceties are over and the reality of the task at hand is here. Fans chanted his name after games in the early weeks; now, he has a lot more convincing to do.
Asked afterwards about the difficulty of the past seven days and whether he still has confidence in his methods given what has occurred, Rosenior replied: “For sure. This is football. Moments can change the flow of things. Two-and-a-quarter games ago, we were away in Paris and it was 2-2 in the game, but we don’t take care of the moments, we switch off.
“What I have to do is make sure we get that back on track and that comes from not making mistakes or errors. That’s something me and my staff have already spoken about now, but that’s something I will speak about tomorrow (Wednesday) and make sure we go into the Everton game in a really positive frame of mind.”
Rosenior is not the only one under the microscope, with more and more Chelsea fans expressing their concern over how the club is being run. Up until now, the hierarchy could point to an upward curve from when they started, with Chelsea finishing 12th, sixth and fourth (plus winning the Conference League and Club World Cup) in their first three seasons in charge.
To show things are at least still heading on the right path, qualifying for the Champions League again via a top-five finish in May is the bare minimum. With eight fixtures to go, Chelsea sit sixth, albeit only one point behind Liverpool and a further two off Aston Villa.
After losing a Champions League quarter-final in similarly dispiriting fashion (4-0 on aggregate against Real Madrid) in 2023, it took another two-and-a-half years for Champions League football to return to Stamford Bridge under this regime. They will not want a repeat.
Rosenior is trying to convince the doubters. “(I have) no worries at all,” he said when asked if he had any concerns about Chelsea not playing in the tournament for a while. “It’s a competition this club deserve to be in and deserve to compete in. My job, along with the club and the players, is to make sure we are there every year competing for trophies. This is the level Chelsea need to be at.”
He will get a lot of respect if he books Chelsea’s place in it from here.
