Antonio Conte has made a late plea to keep Kenedy despite an agreement being in place with Newcastle United for a season-long loan deal as Chelsea failed to sign Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Goal understands.
Kenedy is regarded as a talented youngster amongst Chelsea's talent pool but soured his reputation at the club by making an offensive post about China on his Instagram page.
The 21-year-old was set to go out on loan, with Chelsea confident that they would secure a new wing-back, but the club have been faced with set backs over a host of targets.
Conte has kept the Brazilian in the first team picture despite the Blues having been forced to make an apology to the Chinese, where the club has serious ambitions of growing its fan base.
Chelsea were ideally hoping to send Kenedy out on loan but Conte was only keen to let him go if the club could secure a replacement.
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The Blues missed out on the likes of Alex Sandro, Danilo and finally Oxlade-Chamberlain as they made serious approaches to resolve a lack of depth in the wing-back positions. Meanwhile, Southampton have so far insisted that both Ryan Bertrand and Cedric Soares are not for sale.
Newcastle will be sweating on their deal for Kenedy who is now in contention to stay at Stamford Bridge. He will likely make his first appearance of the season in September as Chelsea play seven matches in 21 days.
