Eden Hazard was left out of the Chelsea squad that beat Schalke 3-0 in the Champions League as punishment for missing training earlier in the week, Jose Mourinho confirmed.
While the Chelsea manager made several changes to the side that lost 2-0 to Newcastle at the weekend, with the likes of Ashley Cole, David Luiz, Juan Mata and Frank Lampard dropping to the bench, it was a surprise to see Hazard not even finding a place in the 18.
Mourinho was a little cryptic as to the reason behind Hazard's absence, but confirmed the Belgian playmaker missed out the Champions League encounter after failing to turn up for training on Monday.
It is believed Hazard travelled to France to watch his former side Lille in action on Sunday, and then failed to turn up for training the next day.
The Portuguese did reveal, though, that Hazard would be back in the squad for the Premier League game against West Brom.
"He missed training on Monday. He forgot the time? That's the end of story. He's a kid," Mourinho said.
"Kids make mistakes and fathers have to be clever in the way they educate their sons. He didn't play. He wanted to play.
"He was sad because he didn't play. We won without him. On Saturday, he is back. So, end of story."
Chelsea were quite impressive in their 3-0 win over Schalke on Wednesday at Stamford Bridge, weathering an early storm from the German side before settling down and finding the goals - courtesy a brace from Samuel Eto'o and one from Demba Ba -- needed to go top of Group F.
"It was good, but of course the first 15 minutes were difficult," the Portuguese added. "We are a team without a lot of maturity, we were quite lucky as they did not score from some good chances. After that we played very well.
"We were stable, kept possession in a very good way, played against them in a way they do not like to play. Petr [Cech] made a very good save to keep it 1-0. Everyone worked hard, especially the wingers against their full-backs. After that we were always aggressive and tried to accelerate the game. We are almost there."
Chelsea are indeed just a step or two away from qualification to the knockout stages, having now picked nine points from four matches, which keeps them three ahead of second-placed Schalke.
The German side's coach Jen Keller, whose team are three points behind Chelsea in second, rued the fact that the opening goal was conceded off a mistake from their goalkeeper Timo Hildebrand, who allowed Eto'o to close him down while making a clearance, with the ball them deflecting off the Chelsea striker and bouncing into the back of the net.
"We had a good start to the game and had three really good chances," Keller said. "We should have put one of them away, because you don't get a lot of chances when playing Chelsea on their ground.
"An individual mistake led to Chelsea's lead and that was something we wanted to avoid at all costs, as we knew Chelsea would defend deep from this point onwards. Despite the setback we continued to create chances and Cech made some quality saves.
"We made another mistake that led to the second goal and a quality side like Chelsea take advantage of these kinds of situations."
