Andreas Christensen made himself unavailable for the FA Cup final.
Christensen’s Chelsea team mates were shocked and confused after the Denmark defender disappeared from the team hotel on Saturday morning. Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel decided not to pick him which caused a last minute change and disruption to his plans.
Christensen complained of feeling unwell during the week, did play at Leeds, wanted to play at Wembley but Tuchel clearly decided against it even though his team mates were expecting him to start. Christensen is set to join Barcelona this summer and now it looks certain that he has played his last game for the club and is heading for an acrimonious exit.
Chelsea have been left frustrated during contract negotiations as they made Christensen a fresh offer earlier in the season and believed they had reached agreement with the former academy graduate.
But Christensen switched agents last year and Chelsea refused to change the terms of the offer which has caused a major stand-off and has ultimately led to his departure.
Chelsea boss Tuchel admitted publicly that he left Christensen out of his starting line-up earlier in the season because of the protracted negotiations.
But with Antonio Rudiger and Christensen set to leave on free transfers this summer, Tuchel has used them both in recent weeks and it is hard to believe the Dane would not have played given Chelsea’s injury problems.
Rudiger is set to join Real Madrid and Christensen’s impending departure means Chelsea will have to look for two new centre halves this summer.
Trevoh Chalobah played on the right of Chelsea’s three man defence on Saturday but Christensen’s unexpected and last minute absence definitely came as an unwanted distraction.
Chelsea had huge problems in the build-up to the game as Kai Havertz was ruled out after a fitness test on Friday because of a hamstring problem.
Timo Werner also missed out and, even though he was on the bench, he complained of a hamstring issue during the warm-up and could not feature.
