Much has been made of late about the form of Chelsea midfielder Cesc Fàbregas in relation to the waning form the Blues have displayed in recent matches. As Opta points out, Fàbregas has only had a hand in two goals for Chelsea in the second half of the season after contributing to 15 over the first half of the campaign, and this appears to align with his tendency to fade over the course of the season in previous years at Arsenal and Barcelona.
While Fàbregas remains far and away the Premier League’s top assist man with 15 on the season, his last service in league play came to Diego Costa on Jan. 17 in Chelsea’s 5-0 rout of Swansea. The Spaniard seems to have leveled markedly from his early season form, averaging a 6.8 rating from Who Scored since the Swansea match, which pales in comparison to his 7.73 average for the season. Truthfully, though, it was never realistic to expect Fàbregas to maintain his blistering pace from the first half of the campaign. Fàbregas sprinted out of the gates, notching a ridiculous six assists in his first four matches in blue while needing just half a season to eclipse Steven Gerrard’s league-best mark of 13 assists from the 2013-14 season.
Playing in a deep-lying position in José Mourinho’s double pivot, a deeper position in the midfield for him compared to years past, Fàbregas is much more reliant on the attacking players ahead of him to rack up assist numbers than he has been previously despite his brilliant vision and passing ability.
“I don’t expect from midfield, from nearly getting the ball off John Terry, to get an assist per game,” Fàbregas told the Evening Standard. “For me, now, it’s about making the team play, making the team click, passing the ball to Hazard, to Oscar, Willian and Juan Cuadrado, all these players. I try to make the team move forward and make runs when I can.”
Looking at Chelsea’s recent run of sluggish performances, it comes as no surprise that Fàbregas’ dip in form coincides with similar trends for some of his aforementioned attacking teammates.
Among Chelsea’s trio of attacking midfielders, only Eden Hazard has been a consistently great performer since January. The Belgian, who plays on the left wing for Mourinho’s Blues, has hovered around an 8.0 Who Scored rating for the season, a grade that seems to reflect the brilliance of his play in just about every match for Chelsea. Otherwise, both Oscar and Willian have not been in stunning form in their attacking roles, and Costa has been labouring at the front of the line. With these players also battling inconsistency, Fàbregas’ work in build-up play is not shining the way it was in the early going.
Like Fàbregas, Oscar started off the season with a flurry of production, notching six goals and seven assists through mid-January. Like his Spanish counterpart, however, Oscar has not impressed since that blowout win in Wales on Jan. 17. The Brazilian has not found the net since that day, and his last assist came a week before in a 2-0 win over Newcastle. Oscar has failed to make a significant impact in the two months since and has turned in a few anonymous performances along the way in his No. 10 role. Likewise on the right wing, Willian has not yet matched his Who Scored season rating of 7.0 in the Premiership since scoring the winner against Everton on Feb. 11.
Perhaps even more importantly, Chelsea’s target man up front, Costa, has also gone through a valley of his own since his three-match suspension that came following the first leg of the Capital One Cup semi-final against Liverpool. The Brazilian-born striker, who burst onto the scene in England with seven goals in his first four Premier League outings, did not play a match for 22 days as a result of the ban and was noticeably rusty upon his return to the lineup. Like Fàbregas, Costa has maintained his lead atop the Premier League scoring list despite a spell of goalless outings that only ended when the centre forward headed home against Southampton on Sunday for his first score in seven games. Since recording a brace against Swans, Costa has averaged a rating of 6.78 in league play, a clear drop off from his season average of 7.59.
These numbers are not presented to make excuses for Fàbregas, but rather to illustrate that his are not the only struggles being experienced by Chelsea players at the present moment. After a lack lustre first half against Southampton, Fàbregas did contribute several incisive passes in Chelsea’s improved second half performance in the 1-1 draw despite giving the ball away on a number of occasions, illustrating his ongoing battle to return to his scintillating standard form.
Questions of fatigue have crept into the discussion heading into the stretch run of the Premier League season, and they are not unwarranted given the lack of rotation employed by Mourinho for most of the campaign. Regardless of the manager’s rotation options, Chelsea hope that its core of attacking players can raise the level of their games to match that of Hazard in order to ramp up the intensity over the final 10 matches.
The outlook remains positive for Fàbregas, who still insists he’s playing in his preferred position on the pitch.
“The position I play is where you have to be more of a complete midfielder,” Fàbregas said. “You have to defend well, attack, control midfield, you have to pass well, you have to know when to go forward and control the tempo of the game. It’s more difficult, but I enjoy it more.”
