{"id":11137,"date":"2026-05-20T07:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=11137"},"modified":"2026-05-20T07:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T07:07:09","slug":"praise-for-exceptional-fernandez-after-chelsea-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=11137","title":{"rendered":"Praise for &#8216;exceptional&#8217; Fernandez after Chelsea victory"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong>Calum McFarlane labelled Enzo Fernandez \u201cexceptional\u201d after the midfielder inspired Chelsea to a 2-1 victory over Tottenham at Stamford Bridge.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Argentine produced a decisive display, <span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>scoring a brilliant goal and setting up another<\/strong><\/span>to keep <span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>Chelsea<\/strong><\/span>  in the hunt for European football.<\/p>\n<p>The win came as a massive boost to the Blues, who had been struggling for form and faced a gruelling turnaround following their weekend cup final defeat against Manchester City.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI thought Enzo was exceptional tonight,\u201d interim boss McFarlane said. \u201cHis goal was brilliant, his assist as well. He has obviously made a massive impact.<\/p>\n<p><smartframe-embed customer-id=\"0fab81ce12e48a0794275e1d82449fb1\" image-id=\"1077665531\" style=\"width: 100%; display: inline-flex; max-width: 100%;\"\/>\u201cBut I don\u2019t think there was anyone you could name on that night on our team that didn\u2019t give absolutely everything to get the win.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to single out one player. I thought the whole team, the subs came off the bench and gave energy when we needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The win lifted Chelsea to eighth in the table, above Brentford. The highest either can finish is seventh \u2013 which might be enough to secure a Europa League spot.<\/p>\n<p>The Blues are away to Sunderland this weekend in their final match of a turbulent campaign.<\/p>\n<p>McFarlane added: \u201cI think this group wants to win every single game of football, and we just haven\u2019t been able to do that. But that will give us confidence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe haven\u2019t won in a while in the Premier League, we haven\u2019t won at the Bridge in a while, so that is something to definitely go off.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"background-color: #1b4f9c; color: white; border-radius: 12px; padding: 16px; display: flex; align-items: center; gap: 12px; font-family: sans-serif; box-shadow: 0 2px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.1); flex-wrap: nowrap;\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 28px; height: 28px; flex-shrink: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/6\/6b\/WhatsApp.svg\" alt=\"WhatsApp\"\/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Get the latest direct to your phone \u2013 follow West London Sport\u2019s WhatsApp channel<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- \/.commentwrap --><\/p>\n<p><!-- \/themify_builder_content --><\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Calum McFarlane labelled Enzo Fernandez \u201cexceptional\u201d after the midfielder inspired Chelsea to a 2-1 victory&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}