Wesley Fofana was left out of Leicester City's squad on Saturday afternoon against Southampton because he was "not in the right frame of mind". The 21-year-old is desperate to join Chelsea this summer football.london understands, and while not submitting an official transfer request, he is pushing internally for permission to leave the King Power Stadium.
Chelsea have seen three offers turned down by the Foxes for the highly-rated Fofana, who signed a new long-term contract at the club earlier in the year. Leicester are insistent they want £80million for Fofana, but Chelsea are doing their best to try and drive that price down.
Explaining to NBC Sports Soccer, via the Mirror, his decision to leave Fofana out at the weekend, Leicester manager Brendan Rodgers said, "One, a change in system and two, I mentioned in the week about coming into a Premier League game and maybe one or two players not being in the right frame of mind. You cannot carry them, and we certainly can't. So that's the reason for the change."
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Rodgers also confirmed that Fofana is now training with the Under-23s for fitness reasons. He said: "He's training with the Under-23s so he can get his football fitness and keep working.
"It's so important at this stage to control any sort of distractions that may be there. He's a good kid, it's just been a really challenging situation for him.
"I've had it a number of times in my career where there's players who can deal with it, cope with it, get on, want to help their teammates. There's others who just cannot deal with the distraction.
"You need the full commitment from your players. These guys get well paid. The very least you can do is turn up. And if you don't, with all due respect, you can't just then think you can walk into our group."
While Rodgers kept it respectful about Fofana, there is clearly some frustration from the Leicester manager about how the French defender has dealt with this whole situation. It's not the first time a player has angered Rodgers when it comes to the transfer window, either.
Back when the Northern Irishman was manager of Liverpool, Luis Suarez conducted that now infamous interview where he stated his desire to leave Anfield amid interest from Premier League rivals Arsenal. Suarez told The Guardian in 2013: "Last year I had the opportunity to move to a big European club, and I stayed on the understanding that if they failed to quality for the Champions League the following season, I'd be allowed to go.
"I gave absolutely everything last season, but it was not enough to give us a top-four finish. Now I want Liverpool to honour our agreement."
Rodgers, in what turned into a public war of words with Suarez, responded in brutal fashion. He said: "I will take strong, decisive action. There has been total disrespect of the club – this is a club that is historically one of the biggest in the world and has given him everything; absolutely everything."
Suarez was then forced to train on his own on an individual programme as a punishment. Nine years on, we're seeing similarities between the Fofana saga to the Suarez situation.
It will be interesting to see if the ongoing Fofana saga results similarly to Suarez's, with the former Liverpool striker staying on Merseyside for another season before he was finally allowed to join Barcelona in the summer of 2014.
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