ENZO FERNANDEZ has been rightly punished for his cowardly behaviour.
Chelsea’s Argentina midfielder and Spain left-back Marc Cucurella both used their international breaks to shaft their club-mates and indulge in some friendly fire.
Maybe what those two said is what all Blues fans were thinking, maybe it was something that needed saying.
One thing that cannot be argued is that it was pathetic.
Did they front up to the English media while wearing their club gear? No.
The pair behaved like little toads and chose to speak where there was zero accountability, no one from the club looking over their shoulder and telling them to wind their necks in.
Fernandez and Cucurella decided to use the safety blanket of their national squads to sound off about the decision to sack Enzo Maresca and the approach their club they play for is taking.
And these are two of Chelsea’s supposed leaders. But this is not leadership, it is arse-covering and self-serving hot air.
Both of them will have thought that — after losing four on the bounce before the break — they could go back and, if everything continued to go wrong, they could tell everyone, ‘I told you so’.
They can say that they pointed out that they wouldn’t have sacked Maresca, that everything was better then. But there are problems with that stance, too.
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Firstly, the players would not, and should not, have been consulted over the decision to give Maresca his marching orders on New Year’s Day.
And, more importantly, these are the same players who got Chelsea into that mess in the first place.
Was everything better when Maresca was about?
If so, why did you lose at home to Brighton, Sunderland and Aston Villa?
They are trying to revise what happened under the Italian after buying into their own hype off the back of winning two tin-pot trophies last season.
We have had two years of noise around Chelsea being the coming force, a young and exciting squad destined for the top. Now, when the pressure has cranked up since Christmas, this supposedly brilliant squad has started to crack.
Their supposed leaders are showing their selfish side.
Both Fernandez and Cucurella are undeniably big players for the club and talented to boot.
One thing which could well have been the catalyst for their outbursts is a new deal for Reece James. The Chelsea skipper is comfortably the best player at the club when he is available.
But that issue of availability has arisen once again, with his new six-year deal followed almost immediately by another hamstring injury for the 26-year-old.
James has been fantastic for Chelsea but he has played nowhere near as much as Fernandez or Cucurella over the past two years.
Because of that, both of them will be wondering where their shiny new deals are. That is what players care about.
They know James is talented but if he isn’t playing that won’t matter a jot to them.
Cucurella, 27, was given better terms last year but not longer on his contract. And Fernandez is waiting on talks over his own future, having cast it into doubt.
All of this is symptomatic of the club Chelsea have become under this ownership. There are so many owners, directors and big figures upstairs that there is next to no authority or accountability.
I cannot see anyone in that squad who would have grabbed the pair by the scruff of the neck when they returned this week and told them to get their act together.
Back when I was a captain, had a team-mate behaved like this you would be telling the manager not to call fouls in training and let the pair know what you really thought of them at the first opportunity.
In axing Fernandez, 25, from his squad for tomorrow’s FA Cup quarter-final with Port Vale and Manchester City next week in the Prem, boss Liam Rosenior may finally be grasping the accountability issue.
But at a club which just cannot get out of its own way, where they are making the noise rather than shutting it out, the issues run very deep indeed.
