Chelsea has sold many stars to other big six clubs, including Mason Mount, Kai Havertz and Mateo Kovacic. Mount has created the most big chances for the Blues since his debut in August 2019 and Mateo Kovacic created the second most big chances for the west London side in the 2021-22 season. This is significant because while Mount and Kovacic are joining Manchester United and Manchester City who have the best creators in world football, Kovacic is also joining a team in Man City who has perhaps the best finisher in world football.
This is important because chance creation has been a problem for Chelsea for the past two full seasons. The Blues highest big chance creator in the past two seasons have been Mount (10), Hakim Ziyech (9), Reece James (9) in the 2021-22 season, and Raheem Sterling (7), Ziyech (6) in the 2022-23 season. This is horrible for a team with a wage bill as high as Todd Boehly’s.
Mount is now gone, and while Ziyech is still at the club, there’s not many people that actually expect him to be wearing blue come August. Many fans have expressed a desire to get a more defensive-minded central midfielder to partner Enzo Fernandez, seemingly to free up the Argentine World Cup winner to play further up the pitch. The question is: Can Fernandez be that creator CFC need?
Some seem to think he can be, and there’s reason to assume this, as he is a superb passer of the ball, and a lot of chance creation is passing. To more accurately answer this question though, it’s important to look at what creators and creators-in-chief have in common.
There are many aspects of chance creation that a midfielder can affect. Central midfielders rarely affect chance creation as directly as Kevin De Bruyne, but there are other metrics to indicate a player that has the tendency to do this. Let’s look closely at passes completed into the penalty area. This metric is used because it is likely the last pass before a shot is taken. Passes into the final third and progressive passes are good passing metrics, but for ball progression.
It should first be noted that passes into the penalty area have to be measured against total completed passes, as the more opportunity a player has to make a pass, the more opportunity he has to pass the ball into the box (18-yard box). According FBref, Looking at several high-end creators in the league something stands out, Fernandes, De Bruyne and Trent Alexander-Arnold all average more than 2.4 passes into the penalty area per 90 minutes.
Even Michael Olise for Crystal Palace completed 1.74 passes into the area per 90, and while that is not objectively high, it’s 5% of his passes – a relatively high percentage of his completed passes, that are going into the box. Fernandez completed more passes per 90 than all the above mentioned players (73.8), and only completed 1.45 passes into the penalty area , which accounts for 2% of his completed passes. Even if you factor in the fact that he’s not an advanced central midfielder, it’s still considerably low for someone who many are insisting should be able to carry the creative load for a team of Chelsea’s stature.
It’s slightly unfair to him to make sweeping conclusions about his ability to be chief creator based on this, but even looking at other more direct metrics like key passes from long balls, Fernandez does not look stellar there either. Toni Kroos, who the former is said to be stylistically similar to, while he also doesn’t make many passes into the area, he comes out top-3 in key passes from long passes, which is a metric you’d expect the former Benfica midfielder to excel in, considering his passing prowess. Kroos completed 1 key pass from long balls per 90, Fernandez by comparison completed 0.25.
To avoid misunderstanding, it should be noted that this piece is not trying to disprove Fernandez’s role to the team, as the Argentine is essential to Chels‘, however, not as main creator. He is good as a deep-lying creator to keep play going and get the ball as far up the pitch as quickly as possible, when the need arises. Fernandez cannot be, and should not be, tasked with playing the role Bruno Fernandes and Kevin De Bruyne play for their respective clubs, and the Blues need that chief creator.