Unsurprisingly, Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca started this season with Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo as his first-choice midfield pairing.
- Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo are both £100m midfielders, while Romeo Lavia had also been out with an injury.
- However, Lavia is fit again and has actually started Chelsea‘s last two Premier League games alongside Caicedo.
- It has seen Fernandez drop down to the bench, though he did start in the Blues’ 2-0 defeat to Newcastle United in the Carabao Cup during the week.
- In that game, Jason Cundy felt Fernandez lost the ball too many times.
- Since Chelsea’s loss to Newcastle, Maresca has made some very interesting comments about Fernandez.
- The Chelsea manager has suggested that he is not going to start the 23-year-old just because the club decided to spend £100m on him.
- “Just because the club spent £100 million, people expect them to be the best player,” Maresca was quoted as saying by The Telegraph. “It is not about how much you paid.”
- “At the end of the day they are human beings and if you pay £100 million that is not my problem. You want to buy me then you pay that money.”
- Chelsea’s win rate is so much higher when Fernandez doesn’t start, which is quite worrying for the Chelsea management.
- Chelsea could end up making an incredible loss on Enzo Fernandez.
It is only a couple of games that Fernandez has been dropped for, so it is probably too early to start discussing the possibility of Chelsea selling the Argentine.
However, Chelsea perform better with Caicedo and Lavia on the side, which means the bench is where Fernandez is going to have to remain.
- A World Cup winner, though, is unlikely to settle for that, and Chelsea’s owners will not want to see a £100m asset wasting away in the dugout.
- If Fernandez cannot get back into Maresca’s team later down the line, a sale is going to have to be discussed.- Given the Argentina international’s struggles in England, Chelsea are not going to get anything close to what they paid for him.- After what Maresca has just said, the Chelsea board should be slightly worried, though a lot can change between now and the end of the season.
