Unshackling Enzo Fernández Has Unleashed His Potential

Chelsea took a risk when they bought Enzo Fernández and until now their £107m investment hasn’t paid off. However, the Argentine’s recent form suggests he may have turned a corner.

When Chelsea made Enzo Fernández the fifth-most expensive player of all time and the most expensive in Premier League history, they were setting him a challenge he was always likely to fail.

Signed from Benfica for £107 million in January 2023 aged just 22 but with a reputation burgeoned by his part in Argentina’s World Cup win at the end of 2022, Fernández was faced with the task of succeeding at a new club in a new league despite a monster transfer fee.

On the list of the most expensive transfers football has ever seen – a list that should, in theory, just contain many of the best players of the last 20 years – there are a lot of flops. Neymar to Paris Saint-German (£198m), Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona (£142m), João Félix to Atlético Madrid (£112.9m), Antoine Griezmann to Barcelona (£107m), Romelu Lukaku to Chelsea (£97.5m), Paul Pogba to Manchester United (£89m), Eden Hazard to Real Madrid (£89m); all transfers that didn’t work out.

When you command such a big fee, expectations are obviously higher and so it’s easier to fail. Fans want a bigger return on their team’s investment; opposition fans will jump at any opportunity to point out a waste of money; the media will scrutinise the player’s impact more they would a player who costs half the amount.

For a forward, goals and assists are what silence the critics. For more defensive-minded players, like Fernández and Moisés Caicedo (£115m) at Chelsea, Declan Rice (£105m) at Arsenal, Harry Maguire (£80m) at United and Josko Gvardiol (£77m) at Manchester City, for example, the whole team has to improve with the new arrival in the team for them to be considered worth the money. And they need to play a lot, too. Availability and consistency are also extremely valuable. Of that list of the five most expensive defensive-minded players of all time, Rice is the only one who can, so far, be called an unqualified success.

But Fernández – as well as teammate Caicedo – is heading in the right direction.

That said, until very recently, there hadn’t been much improvement at Chelsea in nearly two years since Fernández arrived. And even when results started to turn a corner and the team became more consistent, the Argentine was far from a key part of the reason.

When he first joined in January 2023, he was used by then-manager Graham Potter as the deepest midfielder in a double pivot. He had joined in the same transfer window in which Jorginho departed for Arsenal, and was used as the Italian’s replacement, despite having excelled as a creative force for Benfica in the first half of that season, where he had ranked second in the Primeira Liga for assists (five) and top for passes completed in the final third (372).

It didn’t work. He was a lightning rod for criticism (hello hefty transfer fee) in front of a leaky and error-prone defence, as Chelsea fell from 10th when he joined to finish 12th with their lowest points tally in Premier League history. The following season – 2023-24 – under Mauricio Pochettino, Fernández had Caicedo alongside him to provide some stability, but he still didn’t look entirely settled and accustomed to the speed of English football. Chelsea even looked better off without him, winning nine of the 26 Premier League games Fernández started (34.6%), compared to nine of 12 without him (75%).

His final appearance of the season was a start in the 5-0 defeat at Arsenal in April that left Chelsea ninth. After he underwent surgery that ended his season, they then took 16 points from a possible 18 without him to storm up the table, finishing sixth and qualifying for Europe.

Another summer of change at Stamford Bridge with Enzo Maresca coming in and more money spent than any other Premier League team (£219.6m) meant it felt like this year could be make or break for Fernández.

It began well enough as he started six of Chelsea’s first seven games, only missing one through illness, but while they were scoring freely, the team still looked vulnerable at the back. Maresca decided he needed more stability in midfield for a tough run of games against Liverpool, Newcastle, United and Arsenal, with Fernández on the bench for each and the more defensive-minded Roméo Lavia partnering Caicedo in midfield. Chelsea lost only one of those games, and mostly looked impressively resolute at the back.

But during that run of league games, Fernández started the UEFA Conference League tie against FC Noah and picked up three assists in the first half alone before being withdrawn. Three days later, he came off the bench with his side trailing Arsenal 1-0, and within two minutes he had provided the assist for Pedro Neto to equalise.

The quality of their Armenian opponents should rightly be noted for context, while Neto still had a lot to do before firing in from the edge of the box against Arsenal, but Fernández’s form in the following weeks suggests those two appearances had given him a helpful confidence boost.

He was back in the starting lineup to face Leicester following the international break and he was a man on a mission to win his place back in the team on a more consistent basis. He scored once and set up the other in a 2-1 win, while covering more ground (11.5km) than any other Chelsea player has in a Premier League game this season. Then came a tactical tweak from Maresca that appears to have unleashed Fernández further.

With Reece James injured and Malo Gusto lacking match fitness for the trip to Aston Villa, Caicedo was deployed at right-back, with Fernández in midfield alongside Lavia. But whenever Chelsea had the ball, they reverted to a back three with Caicedo moving into midfield and Fernández pushing higher up. He scored another goal as Chelsea won 3-0.

Then there was another assist at Southampton in a 5-1 victory, before he scored Chelsea’s third in the remarkable comeback win at Tottenham on Sunday. Having registered one assist and no goals in his first 13 appearances of 2024-25 in all competitions, Fernández now has three goals and six assists in his last six games.

Comparing his heat maps from his first nine Premier League games of the season with his five most recent appearances shows just how much higher he is operating.

There is more to his game than that output at the sharp end of the pitch, though. Despite playing just 970 of a possible 1,350 minutes in the Premier League this season (71.9%), he ranks favourably for several crucial passing metrics.

He has played the pass before the assist – also known as second assists – more times (six) than any other player in the league, while he ranks sixth for the number of times he has played the pass before a chance has been created for a shot (16).

His involvement in Chelsea’s play isn’t always in finishing moves off, but his numbers prove he does a good job of helping get the most out of teammates further up the field.

He also ranks ninth for through balls (eight) and third for successful switches of play, with all 10 of his attempts finding their target.

Meanwhile, only Mohamed Salah (18) and Cole Palmer (17) have been involved in more open-play passing sequences that end in a goal this season than Fernández (14). Adjust those numbers relative to minutes played, and Fernández (1.3 per 90) is outstripping Palmer (1.2).

He also works hard to win the ball, and when he does so, often does something useful with it. Despite missing more than a quarter of the season, he ranks second in the entire league for the number of goal-ending open-play sequences he has initiated with a recovery (four).

Teammate Caicedo tops the league for starting the most open-play shot-ending sequences (28), but only two of those have led to a goal. Fernández does his best ball-winning work slightly higher up the pitch in more dangerous areas than Caicedo, with the four goal-ending moves he has started coming from 12 shot-ending sequences.

He is daring and incisive with his passing, always looking to break lines. He is comfortable doing that from deep positions, sometimes happy to drop alongside the centre-backs to distribute, as he did with this pass that took Southampton’s entire midfield out of the game. Moments later, Noni Madeuke came close to doubling Chelsea’s lead.

But the biggest difference in recent weeks is how comfortable he has looked receiving line-breaking passes between the lines. On Sunday, Spurs couldn’t handle his movement, overwhelmed in midfield and unable to pick up both him and Palmer, and they both got on the ball in threatening positions time and again. Defensive errors were nearly their undoing but Chelsea ended up creating more than enough to win the game. The 4-3 final scoreline arguably flattered their opponents.

Maresca insists Chelsea can’t win the title, but they have gate-crashed the title race with a bang in recent weeks, and, for arguably the first time in his Chelsea career, Fernández has been a consistently positive influence.

Chelsea have a long way to go to maintain their title challenge, and Fernández has an equally long way to go to pay back his transfer fee, but there’s no denying that things are looking up on both fronts.

Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You can also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.