Bournemouth had a goal ruled out inside the opening minutes of their clash against Chelsea. Antoine Semenyo thought he had fired the Cherries ahead at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday afternoon before the Video Assistant Referee intervened.
The Blues held their line when Alex Scott delivered a cross into the box. Evanilson, who had strayed offside, latched onto the pass, but his first touch invited a challenge from Trevoh Chalobah.
The Chelsea defender's clearance fell to the feet of Semenyo, who smashed the ball past Robert Sanchez and Malo Gusto from close range. Craig Pawson and his assistant, Alex Chilowicz, reviewed the incident from Stockley Park.
After much deliberation, they eventually deemed the Bournemouth striker to have committed an offside offence in the build-up. Michael Oliver communicated the decision, which, unsurprisingly, didn't go down well with the home faithful.
An official statement from the Premier League Match Centre on X, formerly known as Twitter, reads: "VAR checked the referee’s call of goal – and established that Evanilson was in an offside position in the build-up and recommended that the goal was disallowed."
Enzo Maresca make six changes to the team he fielded against Leeds United at Elland Road on Wednesday night. Cole Palmer made his first start for Chelsea since September, coming in along with Reece James, Malo Gusto, Alejandro Garnacho and Pedro Neto.
Speaking to reporters at Cobham on Friday, the Blues boss discussed the struggles of rotating his side during the festive period. Maresca said: "I know our situation that we need, as I said many times, we are players because of the history that we need to manage.
"Wes [Fofana], Reece [James], Pedro [Neto]. We have four or five players, Romeo [Lavia] is injured, but we are four or five players that for their history we need to protect, we need to manage.
"And I said many times that I would like to play all the game with Reece, with Pedro, with Moi, with these kind of players even, with Romeo. But it's not possible so we try to find a different solution."
The Chelsea boss added: "Yeah, it's the most difficult thing for me, personally, this season. Because, as I said, for many reasons, we need to make changes. Now, we played two days ago, we came back yesterday afternoon.
"We have just one session this morning. Most of them, they cannot take part of the session because they need to recover. So, we're going to try to prepare in the best way tomorrow."
And on the Cherries, Maresca added: "I think Bournemouth will be a similar game to Leeds. That's where we need to be better. They are intense, Leeds was very intense.
"I think I said after the game that they were better than us in all the aspects and hopefully we can learn from that and be ready for tomorrow."
