Chelsea face £100m midfield conundrum as Enzo Fernandez is one of biggest creators but has to settle for place on bench

COLE PALMER has had one shot on target in his past two Premier League matches for Chelsea.

Enzo Fernandez has not started the last two Premier League matches for Chelsea.

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Cole Palmer struggled against Arsenal amid a recent injury[/caption]

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Enzo Fernandez has failed to nail down his spot in Chelsea’s strongest line-up[/caption]

When he came off the bench yesterday against Arsenal, within two minutes the Argentinian provided the assist for Pedro Neto to score the goal that lifted the Blues into third position in the table.

Yet still the debate rages that the £106million midfielder can be a liability for the team and cannot play alongside £115m partner Moises Caicedo.

Fernandez is finding it tough proving to boss Enzo Maresca that he deserves a regular place in the starting line-up.

Proof that a gargantuan price tag counts for nothing in the eyes of the demanding Italian whatever the figures say. And some of them are pretty convincing.

Chelsea’s highly-priced star might not be able to read the numbers very well on the speedometer of his Porsche when out driving in Wales, having been banned from driving for six months.

But there is a surprisingly strong mathematical argument in the World Cup winner’s favour that he is a key component of the team.

So far this season nobody has done better than Fernandez at playing the ball forwards to Chelsea’s formidable bunch of young, hungry forwards.

In all competitions so far this season, he has delivered 20.3 passes per 90 minutes that finish in the final third of the pitch.

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For someone bought primarily as a holding midfielder that’s life in the fast lane as he would no doubt grasp.

Portuguese winger Joao Felix, a featherweight, waspish forward, is next on 19.7.

Need someone to set up a goal? He’s your man.

Fernandez is second only to Jadon Sancho for assists this term on 0.49. Sancho is streets ahead on 0.88 but only six games into his Chelsea career, the average is bound to be higher.

And going back to Palmer, only Wesley Fofana and Caicedo have picked out Chelsea’s talisman with a pass more often than Enzo.

The tail end of last season was a microscope into the world of the anti-Fernandez brigade who dismiss him as overpriced.

His last game of the season was April 23 – Black Tuesday when Arsenal smashed Chelsea 5-0 under previous boss Mauricio Pochettino.

Fernandez checked out for a hernia operation the next day and did not play again until the summer.

There were six games left of the Premier League campaign and Chelsea performed a better U-turn that Fernandez could even when being chased by the Old Bill in his flash motor on the way to two speeding convictions.

From abject losers they won five of their last six games. So evidently, with Enzo out of the side, Chelsea can throw off the shackles and pour forwards.

They scored 16 goals in those last six games – but they’d scored that in the previous six too.

He missed the 6-0 thrashing of Everton eight days before the Arsenal debacle but was in the team when Chelsea smashed four past Manchester United 11 days prior to that on April 4.

So whatever Chelsea’s problem at the time was, it wasn’t his, even if Fernandez was clearly struggling with abdominal issues.

Now fit-again, Fernandez has created 1.9 chances per 90 minutes this season – fifth most in the squad. And that includes Sunday’s assist.

The salient point is that Chelsea paid nine figures for Fernandez primarily to shield the defence.

It is now six Premier League games since they kept a clean sheet. Chelsea are third in the table but could be even higher.

Maybe it’s not the attacking part of Fernandez’s game that Maresca is upset about?

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Moises Caicedo is proving his worth but the jury is still out on Enzo Fernandez[/caption]