First international prediction comes true as Chelsea star makes announcement | OneFootball

We called it! Less than 24 hours ago we predicted further withdrawals from international duty from some of our senior players, and we’ve just had one.

Pedro Neto was one of the players most in need of a rest after a long run of games as our established right winger, and after manager Enzo Maresca revealed last week that the winger was managing an injury problem he was top of our list of suspects who might end up not playing for their country in this break.

Neto joins Enzo in players taking a two week rest

Pedro Neto in action for Chelsea. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Neto is already established for Portugal and they need just one point from two easy games to qualify, so it’s pretty easy to smooth over with Roberto Martinez. This allows Neto to join Enzo Fernandez in sitting out the break and hopefully recovering from ongoing issues.

There’s an extra bonus for Chelsea in that Brazil, who have Andrey Santos, Estevao Willian and Joao Pedro going to join them, are playing in Europe in this break. That means far less travel time for all 3, who are bound to feature heavily in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile Cole Palmer should be closing in on a return from his injury issues… this could be a break which really allows us to improve.

In other news…

Joe Shields is still apparently a believer in Ishe Samuels-Smith, who is finally starting to make an impact in the Championship on loan to Swansea after a difficult summer for the 19 year old.

Pedro Neto is one of the senior players in this group now and he delivered like one with a great outing against his former team Wolves. He talked through the reasons he thought his team had been able to get the win.