Not necessarily big games he isn't suited for as he was often our best player in them, it's the super-high intensity ones where he doesn't really suit the nitty-gritty approach.

Cesc isn't use to the CM position, but tbh if Mourinho can pull it off then he'll be an immense player there. His natural game is to look forwards, so it'll take time for him to adjust to the defensive side of the game.

But I agree, for the big games his passing game does tend to go missing.

Cheers Chris, TBH it may be more of a problem but the only games where he hasnt performed have been our 3 tough away fixtures. Everton away was high tempo and he played well but again defensively we was quite poor, but was just a crazy game.

Every time we played United he was always man marked and it worked really well for them, cut of our supply to the forwards.

He's not really a defensive player, either. He'll do his bit but he's more the player you want to shift the ball to immediately after winning it back because if there's a quick ball out he'll spot it

He does normally Chris, but in the utd and city games especially, he did not, a lot of loose balls and i'd be interested to see his percentage. Even if it was still quite high I doubt many passes were crucial or incisive.

Great player, but I now want to start seeing leadership and calming influence from him, matic is still young, Terry doesn't have long left and hazard and oscar are still young too.

No, would like Jose to persist with him in the big/tougher games.
Offensive contribution far outweighs defensive shortcomings(in any given situation).
From a defensive point of view I don't recall him being bad against City and Arsenal, actually I thought that was as good as I've seen him in a disclipined role(after the initial poor positioning/marking against Everton and Swans).

If there is one person who is going to initiate breakaways and affect from deep in tougher matches progressing into the season, It will be him.

I'm happy with his performances, not his natural stance to defend but still settling in as well as he can.

If you think he's ever going to be as disclipined as Luiz and in tandem all the time with Matic in the big games, then you need to lower your expectations.

Did I not read he was out for three weeks yesterday...?

I didnt have a problem against arsenal mf, but tbh his offensive contribution against city was lacklustre and he initiated no breakaways, if anything gave the ball away quite a fair bit.

Sheriff if thats true, thats a big miss.

And mf I would like to hope hes more disciplined than luiz who only had 1 or 2 good games in DM.

I do not need to lower my expectations, fabregas is a pass master, and in our three biggest games, his passing and creativity has been poor.

I take your point he is still settling in though, and trust me I love the signing. Great buy.

His lack of pace is always going to hamper him in high intensity games. No way would I drop him though. Maybe switch positions with Oscar or put Ramires back there move Oscar wide and play him as the '10'..

Aslong as they don't push him up and put mikel in there I am happy, we have our toughest games out the way now anyways, but It may be a problem in europe later on.

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Give me one player that actually retained possession constantly against them?

Costa most certainly didn't, would I want him dropped? No.

Ball retention was at a low against them.

By them, I meant City.

against who mate?
City?
Costa rarely got the ball and was alone against 4 players.

But fabregas is a ball playing midfielder, who has great passing percentage and ball retention, and matic certainly kept it better than him as did hazard.

No they didn't, they were losing possession cheaply.
We could only really keep them in our half when we were in possession, as soon as we entered City's half lost possession.

hazard actually had quite a fair bit of the ball and turned backwards and thats when we lost posesion. Him and matic held the ball a lot better than fabregas. No doubt about it.

*We could only really keep possession in our own half, as soon as we entered City's half lost possession for most part.

Keep him in the team

anyways I dont want to get into who kept it better than who, 3 games and 3 poor perfomances with ball retention from fabregas is more of the issue.

No. Don't drop him.

Whenever Luiz was called upon to partner Matic(short term fix) in the big matches, was excellent.

City, Liverpool, Arsenal and PSG displays immediately spring to mind.
Sure there are some other notably ones that I missed out...

When did Matic play v PSG?

soccer?lol.

Yeah in the bigger games we may be better off playing this....

Ramires, Matic,
Willian, Oscar/Fab, Hazard.

Fabregas isn't undroppable and he leaves us too open at CM sometimes.

Though saying that....
Everton 3-6 Chelsea.
Chelsea 2-0 Arsenal.
City 1-1 Chelsea.
Utd 1-1 Chelsea.
Pool 1-2 Chelsea.

We haven't exactly been doing bad with Fabregas it's just having Ramires & Matic CM might be a better option.