Arsene knows: Now fading Fabregas is Mourinho's problem
Having accumulated 600 career appearances at the age
of just 28, has the midfielder peaked too soon? Or will he come back to
haunt Arsenal again on Saturday?
But the fact is that when Fabregas left Barcelona to return to the Premier League in 2014, Arsenal were his first choice.
He ended up signing for Chelsea in a deal worth around £30 million - but only after Arsene Wenger declined to take up Arsenal’s buy-back option to match the Blues’ offer and bring him back to north London.
"Arsenal had the first option - it was written in the contract - and so they could have said 'yes' but they decided not to,” Fabregas said in a newspaper interview last year. “They told me now [Mesut] Ozil was there, there was no need for me.”
It was not just because of Ozil and Arsenal’s other creative midfielders that Wenger decided against re-signing Fabregas.
There is a school of thought that Wenger believes Fabregas has already peaked despite only being 28, due in large part to the amount of football he has already played in his career.
Fabregas has already played 504 club matches in all competitions for Arsenal, Barcelona and Chelsea, in addition to 96 caps for Spain. That amounts to 600 official career appearances, and Wenger’s view is that workload is catching up with him.
Wenger gave Fabregas his debut at 16 and comparisons have been drawn with the likes of Fernando Torres and Wayne Rooney, two other players who burst on to the scene as teenagers but appeared to be in decline by their late twenties.
It is perhaps too early to draw such conclusions about Fabregas, especially given his role in Chelsea’s title triumph last season when he finished the season with 18 Premier League assists - the most in the division - for Jose Mourinho’s champions.
Nevertheless, the Spaniard’s fall from grace even in this calendar year has been stark, with some even questioning whether he should start against his former club when Arsenal travel to Stamford Bridge this weekend.
Between August and December 31 last year, Fabregas was involved in 15 goals (two goals, 13 assists) and contributed to a goal every 106.5 minutes.
Compare that to an involvement every 214.8 minutes from January to May last season (one goal, five assists) and the fact he has not been involved in any goals in his five Premier League appearances so far this season.
Equally, his minutes-per-chance created has gone from 26.2 from August to December 31 last year to a chance every 52.5 minutes in the current season.
And it’s fair to say Fabregas looks half as affective on the pitch. He has not been helped by the drop in form of his team-mates, too, but he has struggled to dictate games and create chances while being overrun defensively.
Fabregas was substituted for the second time this season in the 3-1 defeat at Everton last Saturday, but Mourinho is expected to maintain his faith in him on Saturday.
Against the club where he spent eight years of his career, Fabregas will not just have a point to prove to Arsenal fans, but also to Wenger.
Fabregas has expressed his regret that the pair no longer speak since the midfielder’s move to Chelsea, despite his attempts to initiate contact with his former manager through text messages.
Wenger made the cold decision not to bring Fabregas back to north London just over a year ago because he felt his prodigy's powers were fading.
If Wenger is right, then Fabregas is now Mourinho’s problem.
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