Who are Chelsea FC? (Part 2)
And what should we make of them for Fantrax?
Welcome back to this mammoth breakdown of 2023 Chelsea FC. If the end of January was like a constant stream of dopamine for Chelsea fans, it’s fair to say that the flow on those chemical taps was briefly paused by Fulham’s friday night trip to the Bridge.
Chelsea won the xG, Chelsea kept a clean sheet (I did say that Badiashile looked good in the previous article). Chelsea didn’t get three points. An all too familiar script.
I’m not going to breakdown the Fulham match. Instead, in this article, I’m going to look at what I believe has been Chelsea’s biggest problem in their league football for a few years now: the central midfield.
Spoiler: there’s still work to do here.
The central midfield
As hinted at, this is probably the hardest position to talk about from a Chelsea perspective (and it’s going to be the longest section). They’ve made some moves here in the Summer and in January (one notable Argentine in particular) but this has been one of the biggest areas of need for Chelsea for a while, having not really refreshed this position in a long time.
The core of this position has mostly been on the shoulders of Mateo Kovacic, Jorginho, N’golo Kante and Ruben Loftus-Cheek in recent seasons, with cameos from the likes of Conor Gallagher (this season), Saul Niguez (in a not hugely notable loan last season) and Denis Zakaria (in a slightly more notable loan this season).
Despite rumours that Thomas Tuchel didn’t see midfield as an investment priority, his structure and team selection during his time at Chelsea seemed, either by design or deliberately, to minimise the asks on the central midfield pivot any time Kante was unavailable (which was often) to play to the strengths of Jorginho and Kovacic (and to hide their limitations). He also rarely played with a pure midfield destroyer in that pivot, so Zakaria (the only true player in this profile in the squad at the moment) was an afterthought in the early season. This meant having the wing-back shape we were all so familiar with and a back three, with Antonio Rudiger (now at Real Madrid) often encouraged to maraud forward in possession.
Graham Potter on the other hand seems keen to reshape the midfield around quicker forward passing and he has turned to Conor Gallagher, Carney Chukwuemeka and Lewis Hall variously in recent games to try to spark something here. In the first post in this series, I wrote about how Chelsea’s plan A is all about wide progression into dangerous areas of the pitch, so it’s important to consider that it is possible that a reason for him trying to magic some threatening passing from midfield could be purely that he’s not had Reece James or Ben Chilwell available for a lot of his time in charge. Unlike in the defence, where a number of high upside names have arrived, this rebuild doesn’t feel hugely complete yet, despite the spending.
Jorginho has left the building to go across London, Zakaria’s spell in SW6 is a loan and Kovacic looks likely to leave either this Summer or at the end of his contract period. Chelsea are also going to have a decision to make about Conor Gallagher who to my eyes has been a genuine contributor this season, despite his statistical profile looking fairly strange for a central midfielder last season at Crystal Palace. That said, Conor is reportedly drawing admiring glances from other Premier League teams with a rumoured value of £40m. When you’ve spent the amount Chelsea have, this is going to be a really difficult thing to turn down, if the interest is there again in the Summer time. They’ll have similar decisions to make about Ruben Loftus-Cheek. Incomings-wise, Chelsea signed Enzo Fernandez and Andrey Santos in the January window. It presumably doesn’t leave them with a lot in the locker for next season.
A lot has been written about Enzo already. He’s a direct replacement for Jorginho in the lineup and offers a lot of what Jorginho did for Chelsea as the team metronome, but what his FBref profile shows is that he’s a far more aggressive passer and creator than Jorginho has been for Chelsea. Encouragingly for Chelsea, when you put Jorginho and Kovacic’s profiles next to Enzo’s, it looks quite a lot like Enzo offers as much (more in some categories) in the aggregate when it comes to buildup than the two other midfielders do in combination (though some of this is supported by set piece contribution).
This did show up in the way Enzo threw himself into that first game against Fulham. He had a few nice occasions of injecting pace into a move with an incisive forward ball. But is he going to be a high-level Fantrax starter? Neither Jorginho nor Kovacic are exceptional Fantrax midfielders, though Jorginho had been on penalty duty. Enzo does look like an improvement on the pair in terms of output numbers, but I’d still be a little cautious when projecting big numbers for this season. His main guaranteed Fantrax plus for this half season is likely in availability, as it seems unlikely that he’s going to be off the pitch much. I’d gamble at a medium cost if he’s going to start for you, though, as the one thing that notably did translate in his Fulham start was that he was a particularly active tackler. This would translate into a pretty steady floor and if he’s able to supplement that with attacking returns, he’ll be a usable asset.
Despite the number of tackles Enzo does make, it is important to say that he isn’t particularly in the “destroyer” midfield profile of someone that breaks up play and creates transition opportunities and one of the priorities for Chelsea is likely to pair him with someone that can provide stability and ball-winning characteristics in the middle of the field.
Chelsea do arguably have one of the world’s greatest players in this role in N’golo Kante but age catches up with us all and Chelsea can’t rely on his availability being consistent at this point in his career. Zakaria has been pretty solid under Potter, but whether Chelsea would pay to make his loan permanent is still to be seen. He’s not dramatically outside of their target age profile, but it has also been a few years since he put up even 20 league starts for his club.
Conor Gallagher is also an interesting one because he does do quite a lot of active defending as a midfielder. You can probably see why Tuchel and Potter have both considered whether he can play a sort of N’golo Kante-lite role, but it is notable that, like Kante, he isn’t naturally a deeper midfielder and, although I think most clubs in the Premier League wouldn’t mind having a Conor Gallagher in the squad, those targeting title aspirations are unlikely to want to be relying on him at this point in his career. Unlike Kante, he doesn’t have the recovery speed and instincts that make N’golo so special (and such a threat in transitional moments) and the possession oriented elements of his game are still a work-in-progress. Ruben Loftus-Cheek also gained a number of minutes last season but at this point looks more like a solid squad player than a reliable starter.
Outside of these four, Chelsea could bring back Ethan Ampadu to the squad at the end of his Serie A loan in the Summer. He’s an interesting player and really shows up in the defensive stat sheet but not a lot else. I suspect Chelsea might judge that his limitations in passing and progressing the ball would be too constraining to what they want to achieve. They could also continue to give minutes to the likes of Chukwuemeka and Hall but neither is a traditional destroyer midfield profile either.
The wildcard here is Andrey Santos, who the club seem to have briefed is expected to be granted a work permit following the U20 South American Championship, where he has had an excellent tournament, including scoring a lot of goals from his box to box midfield position. During the few hours between Jorginho’s sale and Enzo’s signing, there was journalist talk that Chelsea felt comfortable allowing Jorginho’s move because of Andrey Santos’s joining the squad. Its fair to say that I’m doubtful about whether a player with no previous minutes in a top flight league will be able to contribute in a meaningful way for a top half Premier League team. If he can do it though, it would be a fantastic break of luck for Chelsea, because otherwise this is somewhere that they’re pretty fragile over the rest of the season.
I suspect the best case for Chelsea in the midfield is that Enzo absorbs almost every available minute between now and the end of the season and that we will see him partnered with a number of different players, mostly to manage fatigue. Assuming Kante is still out until mid-to-late March at the earliest, an Enzo/Zakaria pivot seems the most natural pairing for team balance. But I won’t be at all surprised if we also see a fair number of minutes for Enzo and Kovacic together and even some more Gallagher minutes in there too. His midfield partner will most likely be a streamer at best, but in most league sizes, you’ve probably got alternative options that are better.
Whatever the combination is though, I don’t really expect any of these names to truly pop on the Fantrax stat-sheets. If Enzo continues to build on his debut, there’s a good chance he’s a reliable starter for a Fantrax roster, but I suspect he’s unlikely to be given a role that leads towards KDB like numbers once everything is settled, so keep your expectations at starter level and hope that he surprises you. There will be weeks where an active “destroyer” wingman for Enzo might get enough activity to be streamable. But with the rotation and the role, that isn’t somewhere I’m wanting to place any of my betting chips.
As I mentioned in the defenders article, when I look at the squad at his disposal, I suspect that a wing-back formation is going to be the most effective formula for Chelsea eventually this season. Potter will really be hoping that this new combination of midfield players can combine to increase the pace and effectiveness of passing through the middle of the field and create opportunities for others - particularly the wide wing-backs and attackers - without becoming a totally open side in transition (as they occasionally were under Frank Lampard).
So there we have it for Central Midfield. In the next (and last) post in this series, we’ll look at the attack and try to make sense of what Chelsea are looking to do in putting the ball in the net and which of the cast of hundreds you might want to hold on to and which you might want to drop.