Enzo Maresca pulled out of his post-match interviews following Chelsea’s disappointing draw with Bournemouth due to feeling unwell, but his assistant Willy Caballero defended their decision to substitute Cole Palmer after an angry reaction from the fans at Stamford Bridge.
Maresca was loudly booed for removing Palmer midway through the second half and replacing him with Joao Pedro. Some supporters also sang: ‘You don’t know what you’re doing.’
The Blues boss last week said that his playmaker was now ready to play a full 90, though since then, he has managed 72 minutes versus Aston Villa and 63 here in this 2-2 draw.
Explaining the call to hook Palmer, Caballero said: ‘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.
‘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.’
On how Maresca is handling the heat, Caballero added: ‘He’s dealing well because he’s 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.’
Caballero said it was in the changing room after full-time that Maresca asked him to fill in as he was not feeling well. ‘He didn’t feel well the last two days, he had a temperature two days ago, he did do the last two sessions because he wanted to prepare the team for this game,’ said the former goalkeeper. ‘But after the game, he went to the changing room and he asked me to replace him because he didn’t feel well. That’s the only thing I can tell you.’
Chelsea have now dropped 15 points from winning positions in the Premier League in 2025-26. That equals their total for 2024-25 and also 2023-24. ‘We have to improve that,’ Caballero said. ‘In another view, it means we are creating, scoring and opening the scoring sometimes, which is good, but we need to manage and find a way to win those points and kill those games.’
On Moises Caicedo now being suspended by Manchester City, after receiving a yellow card for stopping a Bournemouth counter-attack here, Caballero added: ‘We are very frustrated because it was the first foul of the game and it was close to us.
‘We looked at the foul more than once and it doesn’t look like a yellow. But it’s done now so we’re 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’s a big loss, but it’s 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.’
