Enzo Maresca is keeping the faith with Enzo Fernandez despite his selections pointing elsewhere.
Manchester United hosted the Blues and halted their momentum by grinding out a draw in front of a teeming crowd whose cheers betrayed their excitement about Erik ten Hag’s departure and a new manager coming in.
Bruno Fernandes’ penalty which sealed the points for the host was met with so much positivity that it felt like the Blues had lost. As a result, fans and media singled out his chosen midfield which had no Enzo Fernandez as scapegoats, leading to Maresca’s defence of his choices.
“I still trust Enzo,” the head coach stated. “There is not any reason in the world I can lose confidence in him. The reason why he is not playing in the Premier League is because at this moment I take a different decision. My confidence is 100 per cent with Enzo.
“In this moment, I know you are looking for some different reasons for Enzo [not starting], but it’s very simple. He’s not playing in this moment, we have so many games, he’s going to play for sure in the future. And it doesn’t mean Romeo and Moi are always going to play. At the moment one of them drops [their levels], probably we will change it.”
Centreback Levi Colwill, meanwhile, did not hesitate to throw his teammates under the boss when approached about the draw at Old Trafford, insinuating that the team’s attack let the club down in the tie.
“I think the team are very frustrated. Where we are in the season, the football we’ve been playing, like today at times, we deserve to win most games,” Colwill said.
“I want to win every game so I was bit disappointed yesterday that we didn’t. It was obviously a tough one out there and they had threats and that’s how they scored. We know what we’re building, we know how good we are, how good we can be and how good we’ve been this season.
“At times in this game we played good football, created good chances, but if you don’t take the chances it keeps them in the game and they get a sniff. That’s what happened yesterday.
“I’m a bit frustrated because I went into the game to get three points which we didn’t, and it’s always frustrating when you don’t win the game. I thought we played good stuff and created good chances that on another day we might take.”
