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Premier League Player Benched For The First Time In 6,660 Minutes

Premier League Player Benched For The First Time In 6,660 Minutes

It's quite incredible that he managed to play so many matches in a row.

Ryan Sidle

Ryan Sidle

In this day and age of football being a 'squad game', what a horrendous cliche, and managers loving a bit of rotation/dropping players it's a surprise when a player starts four games in a row, never mind starting and finishing 74 games in a row!

Modern football sees players being fitter than they've ever been but equally managers complaining more than ever about the amount of football they have to play and thus players are constantly 'rested.'

Tonight has seen fantasy football players tear their hair out with Premier League managers Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp leaving out Eden Hazard, Leroy Sane and Mohamed Salah of their teams. That's if those fantasy bosses still have any hair.

Klopp has left Salah out tonight and he's been absolutely flying. Image: PA Images

However despite all those big attacking names missing out it's actually a defender being benched that is most surprising of all. For 74 Premier League matches in a row, stretching back to December 2015, Cesar Azpilicueta has played all 90 minutes- not any longer.

Against Swansea on Wednesday night the Spaniard known as Dave was left on the bench with Antonio Conte playing Antonio Rudiger, Anders Christiansen and Gary Cahill at centre back and Cristian Zappacosta at right back.

For Azpilicueta it's a well deserved night off, for the rest of us it's time to check who's on our fantasy football bench.

Featured Image Credit:

Topics: Chelsea, Cesar Azpilicueta, Premier League, Fans