Ням гарагт болох Манчестерийн дербид 125 сая фунт стерлингийн үнээр Манчестер Ситид ирсэн Энцо Фернандес анх удаа Бруно Фернандештэй талбай дээр сөргөлдөх гэж байна.
Бруно Фернандеш болон Энцо Фернандес нар нь талбай дээрх хөдөлгөөн, тоглолтын арга барилаараа олон нийтийн анхаарлыг татдаг бүтээлч хагас хамгаалагчид юм. 2023 оны хоёрдугаар сараас хойш Энцо Фернандес шүүгчтэй маргасны улмаас 11, Бруно Фернандеш 6 шар хуудас авсан нь тэдний тоглолтын өрсөлдөөнт шинж чанарыг харуулж байна. Статистикийн хувьд Бруно Фернандеш өнгөрсөн улиралд 20 оновчтой дамжуулалт өгч дээд амжилт тогтоосон бол 2024-25 оны улирал эхэлснээс хойш 235 боломж үүсгэж лигийг тэргүүлж байгаа бол Энцо Фернандес 147 боломж үүсгэжээ.
Тэдний тоглолтын гол онцлог нь хамгаалалтын шугамыг нэвтлэх дамжуулалт хийх чадвар бөгөөд Бруно Фернандеш өнгөрсөн улиралд хамгаалалтын шугамыг нэвтэлсэн 59, Энцо Фернандес 55 дамжуулалт хийсэн байна. Бруно Фернандеш нэг хүрэлтээр дамжуулалт хийх тал дээр илүү эрсдэлтэй тоглодог бол Энцо Фернандес бөмбөггүй үедээ гүйлт хийж, талбай дээрх аюултай нөхцөл байдлыг үүсгэх тал дээр илүү үр дүнтэй байгааг “expected threat” (xT) үзүүлэлт харуулж байна.
Энцо Фернандес Челсид байх хугацаандаа xT үзүүлэлтээр лигийг тэргүүлж байсан нь түүний байрлал сэлгэх хөдөлгөөн өрсөлдөгч багийн хамгаалалтад хэрхэн дарамт учруулдгийг баталдаг. Бруно Фернандеш нь боломж үүсгэх, дамжуулалт хийх тал дээр Манчестер Юнайтедын довтолгооны гол хөдөлгүүр хэвээр байгаа юм. Ням гарагийн тоглолтод эдгээр хоёр тоглогчийн сэтгэл хөдлөл, бүтээлч тоглолт нь дерби тоглолтын өнгө төрхийг тодорхойлох нь дамжиггүй.
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Right down to the letters printed on the back of their shirts, Bruno Fernandes and Enzo Fernandez have plenty in common.
Now the two midfielders even share a city, facing off on Sunday in the Manchester derby for the first time following Fernandez’s £125million ($169m) move to Manchester City from Chelsea on transfer deadline day.
Both are creative mavericks whose animated on-pitch demeanours divide opinion. Since Fernandez made his Premier League debut for Chelsea in February 2023, no player has received more yellow cards for dissent than his 11. Haranguing referees is also a staple of the Fernandes experience, and the Manchester United player has talked himself into six bookings during the same period.
It speaks to the fierce competitiveness of the pair, who clearly require that bit of emotional friction to ignite their creative spark. When in full flow, though, few are able to mimic their all-action brand of playmaking.
Fernandes set the single-season Premier League assist record last campaign with 20, and is clearly more prolific when it comes to creating chances. The Portugal international has amassed a league-leading 235 chances since the start of 2024-25, with Fernandez second on 147, though the Argentine drops to 18th on a per-90 basis.
Chances and assists, though, only reward the final pass in each move. Step away from those end-product numbers, and the ways in which both players create danger across the entire pitch share some common themes.
Both possess the vision and technical quality to complete a high volume of line-breaking passes. For the uninitiated, these are passes played beyond a group of opposition players, whether in attack, midfield or defence, with the visual example below illustrating one that bypasses both midfield and defence.
What stands out for both players is the range of their line-breaking. The graph below shows passes played behind the defensive and midfield lines, with both players ranking highly for feeding team-mates in the pocket behind the opposition midfield and in front of the defence, while also regularly splitting the last line to release runners in behind. Fernandes played 59 defensive line-breaking passes last season, the most in the Premier League, with Fernandez third on 55.
From a City perspective, Elliot Anderson’s position on the graph relative to his new team-mate makes for encouraging reading, and suggests the pair should dovetail well together. City head coach Enzo Maresca intends to use Anderson as a deep-lying No 6, and no midfielder completed more line-breaking passes beyond the opposition midfield last season. That suggests he can feed the more advanced Fernandez, who can in turn play those eye-of-the-needle passes in behind for Erling Haaland to latch onto.
Fernandes, meanwhile, had to pick up United’s creative slack across all areas of the pitch last season, completing 131 line-breaking passes within his own half, 47 more than Fernandez at Chelsea, compared to just eight more in the opponent’s half. The Argentinian still boasted an impressive breadth to his line-breaking, but was able to concentrate more of his efforts in his favoured left-sided half-space. He was also prolific from more central areas, with no player completing more than his 21 line-breaking passes from that No 10 zone.
Their speed of thought and execution is what allows them to pick out team-mates between the lines so frequently; playing the pass before defenders can close the space. Fernandes’ approach can veer on the side of frantic; according to tracking data company SkillCorner, he attempted 712 one-touch passes last season, over 100 more than any other Premier League player, with Fernandez sixth on 514.
That appetite for risk is the main difference between the two, and a trait that makes them well suited to their respective sides. Fernandes completes 70 per cent of those one-touch passes, compared with Fernandez’s 76 per cent, but the Manchester United captain is tasked with shouldering a much greater share of his team’s creative burden.
Fernandez, reunited at City with former Chelsea head coach Maresca, is more accustomed to possession-oriented, controlled football, where his comparatively restrained creative approach is a better fit.
That contrast makes Fernandes the more eye-catching playmaker, but his new Manchester rival’s creativity is not fully captured by his on-ball actions. As The Athletic’s Thom Harris wrote, few players make more disruptive off-ball runs than Fernandez.
One way to capture the value of this movement is through a metric called expected threat (xT), which, put simply, measures the chance that a shot will be taken within the next 10 seconds. Using tracking data, xT considers the position of the ball, a player’s team-mates and the proximity of defenders to estimate how dangerous a possession is.
Chelsea’s xT increased by a cumulative 41.7 following Fernandez’s in-possession runs last season, the highest figure associated with any single Premier League player, with Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo second on 37.2. Per 90, the pair are level, trailing only Fernandez’s team-mate Phil Foden. That is not to say the runs themselves created that danger; as mentioned previously, xT is measured using a range of factors, but Fernandez’s league-leading figure shows that his movement is associated with consistent threat.
Fernandes meanwhile sits further back on 25.5xT, indicating that those box-crashing runs are a lesser facet of his game, focusing more on playing ambitious passes for United’s runners in behind.
Despite his more purposeful movement, Fernandez has scored just five open-play goals since his Chelsea debut, three fewer than Fernandes in the same timeframe, but those runs often served to draw defenders away, creating valuable space for Chelsea’s other attacking players, most notably their talisman Cole Palmer.
Beyond the calculated world of line-breaks and off-ball runs, these two share intangible qualities, both bound by a passionate, never-say-die attitude. While others might shrink in the face of the Manchester derby’s intense, raucous atmosphere, it only fuels their creative fire.
Each will put in a full-blooded, maybe even tempestuous, performance, full of animated cajoling and embodying the edgy needle that defines this historic rivalry.
But above all that inevitable emotional theatre, expect some dazzling football from two players whose similarities extend far beyond their names, but who, like the lettering on their backs, still remain distinctively unique.
