Cesc Fàbregas: Mourinho’s Architect

Jul 28 • Featured, Joe Tweeds, Player Features • 6636 Views • 7 Comments

After a promising cameo in pre-season, I had a look at what Fàbregas brings to Chelsea and what we can hope to see this season.

Blink and you most likely would have missed Cesc Fàbregas’ arrival to Chelsea over the course of this summer. There is something odd about a player of Fàbregas’ quality arriving at the club to such little fanfare. In many ways there is an Ashley Cole type feeling about the whole situation. He feels like an Arsenal player, he looks like a Barcelona player and yet he is now ours.

Cole notably departed this summer having cemented himself firmly in the hearts and minds of Chelsea fans. One of his greatest achievements, and there are undoubtedly many, was switching the perception of his roots. It is now weird to see old images of Cole wearing the red of Arsenal; he feels very much like part of the Chelsea furniture. Having an ex-Arsenal academy product leave Chelsea as one of its best and most well respected footballers takes some doing.

Fàbregas does not need to produce “banterous” sound bites mocking Arsenal, nor would I advise him to try too hard to please his new supporters. There is no need for him to go all #LadBible on us. Cole won fans over through his performances and eventually earned the right to say whatever he liked. His “now nobody can say anything” comments in Munich summed everything up. If Fàbregas works hard and delivers, the feeling of seeing him wearing blue will change much in the way it did with Cole. That is what hurts their supporters the most.

As surreal as it was to see Fàbregas line up in royal blue (or is it reflex blue these days?), he is arguably the missing piece of a complex puzzle. I would never judge a player on what he does or does not do in pre-season, but there are encouraging signs of a burgeoning midfield partnership between Matić and Fàbregas. I had lost count of the number of sumptuous clipped through-balls by the time the game reached half-time. His perfectly weighted pass for Diego Costa’s well taken “debut” goal was a hopeful prelude to this season.

We could potentially be here a while if we drilled down into the details of Chelsea’s inability to win the Premier League last season. However, a salient issue that frequently reared its head was a complete lack of imagination in successfully attacking defensive sides. Something that no doubt provided more than a dollop of irony was how Mourinho’s Chelsea struggled to break down a parked bus. Teams grew wise to the tactic of “give it to Eden” and began to ensure there were a minimum of three people near him every time we had possession. Well-organised teams would invariably pinch a goal and we lacked the creative ability to break them down.

This is exactly where Fàbregas comes into the equation and why Mourinho is so keen to stress the importance of finding a midfielder with a different profile. It is not only what Fàbregas can do with the ball at his feet that is so intriguing, but it is what other teams psychologically feel when he is in the side.

With all due respect to Ramires and his insane work rate, if he picks the ball up outside the area the likelihood of him finding that special pass is rare. Fernando Torres offered little attacking impetus last season, his movement lacked purpose and his teammates had lost confidence in his ability to retain possession as the season neared its conclusion. As an opposing midfield you are acutely aware of this and likewise your defence feels the same.

This allows opponents to focus more on organising themselves and stopping the ball circulating. Their entire focus is on shape and discipline, rather than what Ramires can do with the ball. Defenders are not concerned about Torres because they have noted that the ball is not sticking with him and his teammates are unwilling to gamble and break beyond him. He is such a nonentity that they will leave only one centre-back to keep an eye on him. Any team who can be afforded the luxury to play like this are infinitely tougher to break down.

Your right-back can pull across his centre-back to cover Hazard cutting inside. He can also pull one of his central midfielders across and his winger. They called our bluff. We neither had a midfielder with the quality and vision to hurt them nor a striker worth worrying about. Teams could focus all their attention on stopping the ball getting to Hazard and overloading his channel with men. Picture how you feel when Agüero is up-front and David Silva has the ball and contrast that with Ramires with Torres to aim for. If that is how you feel, then a Premier League centre-back is laughing.

The introduction of Fàbregas and Diego Costa absolutely changes this. My thoughts on Costa can be found here, but I will try to keep things related soley to Fàbregas in this piece. When the ball arrives to Fàbregas in a pocket of space opposition midfielders and defenders must now focus entirely on what he is going to do with the ball. They will now be aware that Diego Costa is peeling in behind, making runs, dropping deep, retaining possession, pulling them wide and generally being a pest. They are now unable to reorganise so rigidly because both the speed and accuracy of the distribution is making it impossible for them to perfectly place ten men behind the ball.

What Fàbregas brings is the ability and confidence to play the difficult pass. That difficult pass is the difference between Eden Hazard getting ten opportunities to go 1-on-1 with his full-back during the course of a game and two opportunities. There is now a fear of someone ahead of the ball and fear of someone on the ball. We did not have this at all last season.

Fàbregas may well have started at Barcelona but his DNA is all Premier League. He can pass a football with the best of them, but his style is all about making that incisive ball that cuts a team open. His distribution and vision walk hand-in-hand with a side that plays at tempo. Barcelona’s patient and probing style of football never fit his character. After moulding and giving us Ashley Cole we now look like we have something else to thank Arsenal fans for.

Fàbregas is a highly intelligent and tactically astute footballer. His movement in his first Chelsea outing, despite the level of opposition, would pose problems for anyone. He drifts into areas of space, provides his teammates with viable passing angles and moves play quickly without taking unnecessary touches.

Cesc Fàbregas implicitly trusts his technique and this is reflected in his ability to play the game quickly and purposefully. There will be a time when his fantastic range of passing is picking out Eden Hazard, André Schürrle or Willian: that should worry teams.

The balance between Fàbregas and Matić will be crucial this season. It will also be interesting to see the development in Matić’s game alongside Fàbregas. The Serbian has far more to his repertoire than simply breaking up play and keeping it simple. He is the player that Obi Mikel should have become.

Matić can hit both the long Hollywood pass and the simple five-yarder with equal aplomb. Moreover, he is always looking to advance the play where possible. You never get the impression he has gone sideways or backwards because it was the simple ball. He has gone there because an attacking pass simply did not present itself.

The relationship is in its early stages but Fàbregas and Matić completely ran the midfield yesterday against a fully-fit professional team. Matić carried the ball forward when he could, hit some great passes and notably seemed to have a great connection with Fàbregas. The Spanish international seems to inherently understand the role he has been given and to see that level of comprehension so early in his tenure is refreshing and promising.

Where Fàbregas eventually plays is currently up for debate. Playing alongside Matić or in an advanced number ten role seem to be the obvious choices. A lot will depend on the form of his teammates. If Oscar continues to underwhelm, Willian could assume Oscar’s number ten role and Schürrle could step up as a regular first team player. We may even see Van Ginkel pushed in alongside Matić and Fàbregas slotted into the number ten role. Where is he best?

There are some concerns that moving away from the Luiz/Matić power pivot© (I’m copyrighting that…) in “big” games will see us become less competitive. Whatever your opinion on Luiz his rambunctious style was a huge asset against fellow top sides. He had his best game for us in a powerful midfield alongside Matić against Manchester City. Can we attempt to outplay sides by going with Fàbregas and Matić versus tougher opponents?

The luxury of the squad Mourinho is building is that we can afford to change formation, style and mentality if so required. If there were genuine concerns about being less combative in midfield then van Ginkel or Romeu could step into the pivot. We could push Fàbregas into the number ten spot and play Willian and Hazard with Costa up top.

I genuinely do not believe that Mourinho will allow us to be physically dominated, therefore the likelihood of this occurring is quite high. Van Ginkel in particular has an edge about him and combines some very physical tackling with a good range of passing. Then again Mourinho never does the obvious thing and we may be playing so well that he purposefully attacks — stranger things have happened.

I trust Mourinho to achieve results against direct competitors in any fashion possible. Taking four points as a minimum target certainly pushes you towards clinching league titles. It is not, however, in these games that we have come unstuck in the past. In the same way that Suárez bullied teams outside the top six, so much so that it almost delivered Liverpool a title, we need to rediscover our ruthlessness against sides we should be beating. The handbrake must come off this season against defensive sides. Notably our full-backs were much higher up the pitch in the first-half yesterday — is this a sign of things to come?

The nuances between who attacks and who defends should lessen even more so with Fàbregas in midfield. Matić will be the chief destroyer and Fàbregas the architect, but it will not simply be a case of Matić being a one-dimensional holder and Fàbregas abdicating all defensive responsibility. We have already seen Fàbregas coming deep to pick the ball up off our centre-backs. Similarly we have seen Matić charge into the opponents final third and stay there as an outlet. Flexibility is the key and will make us a more complete side this year.

Ultimately Fàbregas brings immeasurable quality to Chelsea and his ability on the ball supersedes anything we have seen for a number of years. It is easy to forget through bias and time that when Fàbregas left the Premier League he was arguably the best midfielder in it. His time at Barcelona has not dampened any of his ability, even if he has been played frequently out of position and at a team who are at odds with his qualities. All this means is that we are getting an even more well-rounded player (someone who has played as a striker, winger and everywhere in midfield) for our money.

It will take time to adjust to seeing Fàbregas in a Chelsea shirt. It took time with Ashley Cole. However, given what Fàbregas brings and how much he still has to offer I foresee him following the same path that Cole trod. Fàbregas is a world class midfielder who will become the focal point of a side built to exploit his creativity, imagination and technical ability. His arrival means more time for everyone on the pitch and ultimately he could prove to be the difference against defensive sides. As soon as teams realise they cannot simply sit back against us without paying for it the game changes for Mourinho. This is what someone of Fàbregas’ quality brings to the table. This is what Fàbregas can deliver. Who knows, he might just be one of our best buys ever?

ChelseaFabregas

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