Премьер лигийн хүрээнд болсон тоглолтын үеэр Челсигийн хагас хамгаалагч Энцо Фернандес эсрэг багийн хөгжөөн дэмжигчдээс ширүүн эсэргүүцэлтэй тулгарлаа.
Даваа гарагт болсон тоглолтод Челси Фулхэмийг 3-2-ын харьцаатай хожсон ч Энцо Фернандесийн ирээдүйн талаарх асуултууд хөндөгдсөн хэвээр байна. Тоглолтын өмнө болон үеэр Фулхэмийн хөгжөөн дэмжигчид түүнийг үзэн ядсан хандлагаар угтсан бол Челсигийн дэмжигчид түүнийг дэмжиж, нэрээ дуудан хариу барьжээ. Тоглолтын дараа Челсигийн дасгалжуулагч Хаби Алонсо тоглогчийн ирээдүйн талаар тодорхой шийдвэр гараагүй байгааг мэдэгдэж, энэ долоо хоногт нөхцөл байдал тодорхой болно гэдгийг онцолсон байна.
Фернандес өнгөрсөн улиралд 15 гоол оруулж, хувийн амжилтаараа ялгарсан ч түүнийг хамгаалалтын бүсэд байрлуулах нь багийн тактикийн хувьд сул тал үүсгэж байгаа нь мэргэжилтнүүдийн анхааралд байна. Тэрээр 2023 оны нэгдүгээр сард Бенфикагаас 120 сая еврогоор ирснээс хойш хамгаалалтын шугамыг найдвартай бүрхэж чадаагүй бөгөөд Мойсес Кайседотой хамт тоглох үед багийн хамгаалалт тогтворгүй байдгийг өнгөрсөн улирлын 63 алдсан гоол гэрчилж байна.
Манчестер Сити багтай холбогдож буй түүнийг явуулах нь Челсигийн хувьд санхүүгийн болон тактикийн хувьд шинэ боломж байж болох ч наймдугаар сарын сүүлээр орлон тоглогч олох нь эрсдэлтэй алхам юм. Алонсогийн шинээр байгуулж буй 3-4-2-1 системд Морган Рожерс болон Эстевао нар илүү тохирох хувилбар болж байгаа тул Челсигийн удирдлагууд зуны солилцооны цонх хаагдахаас өмнө шийдвэр гаргах шаардлагатай байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
Fulham fans at Craven Cottage on Monday gave Enzo Fernandez an early taste of what he can expect regularly at Premier League grounds this season, regardless of whether he is a Chelsea or a Manchester City player by next month.
Venomous boos greeted the announcement of his name among the Chelsea substitutes ahead of kick-off. As he walked across the pitch towards the dugout in preparation for the second half there were deafening chants of ‘w****r’ from the home support.
England’s wounds from losing against Argentina in a bad-tempered World Cup semi-final this summer are still raw. The fact that next to him was countryman Valentin Barco, famously slapped by Jude Bellingham in retaliation for celebrating Fernandez’s equaliser in the faces of England’s dejected players in Atlanta, was just the bright red cherry on the ragebait cake.
Chelsea supporters at Craven Cottage responded by applauding Fernandez and singing his name. Football is inescapably tribal and opposition abuse tends to prompt a closing of ranks. He was shown similar warmth by the majority of the away end at full time, before giving his match shirt to a supporter as he left the field.
Enzo Fernandez was loudly jeered at Craven Cottage on Monday (Adrian Dennis / AFP via Getty Images)
No one expects the goodwill to last if he joins Enzo Maresca, never particularly popular and now widely despised around Stamford Bridge, at City.
Transfer-saga fatigue is spreading. Speaking after Chelsea’s 3-2 win over Fulham on Monday, manager Xabi Alonso betrayed some weariness at the lack of closure. “In football, I am not surprised by anything,” he told the BBC’s Match of the Day when asked about Fernandez’s future. “We will see. My wish is that we know what will happen for the future but we will see this week.”
The off-field case for Chelsea selling Fernandez this summer is easy to understand. Through his public actions — and by extension those of his agent Javier Pastore — he has been a troublesome presence for much of 2026, criticising the club’s decision-makers on the record last season before flirting with Real Madrid, then doing nothing to discourage interest from Maresca and City this summer.
Even if the desired outcome was a new, significantly improved contract at Stamford Bridge, the strategy pursued has been provocative and adversarial. If he stays and is rewarded with a pay rise, who is to say this won’t happen again in a year or two? If no new terms are agreed, can there be any real confidence at this stage that he will be a good soldier for Alonso this season?
The football merit of letting Fernandez go has been less discussed. For all the risk that getting him could significantly improve City under Maresca, there is also the very real danger that keeping him could make the Chelsea team that Alonso is building meaningfully worse.
Among the Fernandez devotees in Chelsea’s fanbase, such a claim will raise eyebrows. He was unequivocally one of the club’s best performers last season, scoring 10 goals from midfield in the Premier League for the first time and netting 15 times across all competitions. He deserves huge credit for transforming himself into the best goalscoring No 8 seen at Stamford Bridge since Frank Lampard, as well as being a highly gifted passer.
David Ornstein on Enzo Fernandez’s future
David Ornstein
But that transformation speaks to the strange path that Fernandez’s career at Chelsea has taken. He was bought from Benfica for €120million (£106m) in January 2023 to be Jorginho’s replacement, the deep-lying conductor of a new, world-class midfield. That is where he most often played in the second half of the miserable 2022-23 campaign, as well as in Mauricio Pochettino’s only season as head coach in 2023-24.
The problem is that Chelsea have never been good enough defensively with Fernandez operating deep in midfield. Despite working admirably to improve his conditioning in recent years, he can struggle athletically to cover large spaces in the middle of the pitch and his defensive awareness is not sharp enough to be an effective destroyer of opposition moves.
Pochettino had real doubts about the viability of deploying Fernandez in a double midfield pivot with Moises Caicedo. Even with the intensity of Conor Gallagher leading the press in front of them, Chelsea were regularly carved open in defensive transition and conceded 63 goals in the Premier League in 2023-24.
Maresca’s solution was to push Fernandez upfield into the left pocket and invert a full-back into deep midfield next to Caicedo, as well as slowing Chelsea’s possession play to keep the team more compact and better able to manage counter-attacks. These changes helped make the collective structure more solid and helped the Argentinian play the best football of his Stamford Bridge career, but came at the cost of other things — most notably contributing to the nosedive in form of Cole Palmer.
The early signs are that Alonso is not going to do that with his 3-4-2-1 system. Fernandez would be well suited to playing as the left-sided No 10 behind Joao Pedro, but there are approximately 117 million reasons why marquee summer signing Morgan Rogers will occupy that spot next to Palmer. Whenever either of them is absent, Estevao is very capable of stepping in.
Fernandez regularly plays deeper in midfield for Argentina, and has enjoyed great success doing so. But in addition to recognising the fundamental differences between international and club football, it is worth remembering that Lionel Scaloni’s team looked vulnerable defensively in virtually every game of the last two World Cups and conceded four goals in two matches against Cape Verde and Egypt en route to the final of the 2026 edition.
It is clearly unfair to lay that at the feet of any one player, let alone a midfielder like Fernandez, but it does inform the broader picture. None of the coaches that BlueCo have appointed in the last three and a- half years have found a way to make a Fernandez-Caicedo double pivot work out of possession. Alonso is extremely smart and may have a tactical solution in mind, but if Chelsea can get the price they want from City, would it not be easier to move on and reinvest?
So late in the transfer window, that path is not risk-free either. Most of the biggest central-midfield dominos in this summer market have already fallen and many of the ones who are still standing (hello Alex Scott and Adam Wharton) play for clubs with no desire or urgent financial incentive to risk damaging their own season ambitions by selling.
It is entirely conceivable that Chelsea could sell Fernandez to City for more than they paid in January 2023, while simultaneously being compelled to wildly overpay for his replacement. That is the nature of this inflated transfer market, but it still might be preferable to keeping him and running the risk of giving Alonso an intractable problem as he attempts to balance his team.
Even in defeat, Fulham succeeded in exposing frailties in Chelsea’s defensive structure at Craven Cottage. Caicedo returning from injury will help but Romeo Lavia has his own limitations defensively. Adding the right No 6 could help establish an effective counterweight for what is already looking like one of the most dangerous attacks in the Premier League.
The identity of that player is a question for Chelsea’s sporting leadership team, who always have a list of potential targets. Informing their deliberations in the final days of August will surely be the sizeable body of evidence to suggest that it is not Fernandez.
