Enzo Fernández completed a historic comeback win for Chelsea at the weekend with a goal following a run from deep, the type of which is increasingly becoming his trademark.
After Chelsea made history at the weekend, much was made of the impact of Liam Rosenior’s substitutions.
A triple change at the break, with his side two goals down at home to West Ham and having been thoroughly outplayed in the first half, sparked a remarkable turnaround. “I had to make changes,” Rosenior admitted after the game.
Wesley Fofana, Marc Cucurella and João Pedro were introduced, and they provided two goals and two assists between them as Chelsea came from two goals down at half-time of a Premier League game to win for the first time ever.
There’s no doubt that the substitutes were crucial in changing the game and helping Chelsea to three points that took them into the Premier League’s top four overnight. However, it was Enzo Fernández who scored the winner, and he arguably deserves more credit than anyone who changed the game from the bench, in part for simply being able to play the full 90 minutes.
“The team was tired,” Rosenior said. “It was the highest distances we’ve run, against Napoli, because I’m asking the team to press in a different way. We got back at 5am on Thursday.”
The players were knackered from their exploits in Naples in midweek, so Rosenior rotated heavily for West Ham’s visit, making seven changes from the team who had secured passage to the last 16 of the Champions League with another impressive comeback win.
Fernández was one of only three outfielders who kept their place in the starting lineup, along with Moisés Caicedo and Malo Gusto. He and Caicedo both played the full 90 minutes.
And he marked his 150th appearance for Chelsea with as key a contribution as anyone has made for the club since he joined in January 2023, bundling home from 12 yards after crashing into the box to meet João Pedro’s excellent cut-back and send Stamford Bridge into raptures. His late arrival in the penalty area and finish, two minutes into second-half injury-time, secured a comeback win that had seemed unthinkable at half-time. Chelsea were so poor in the first half that they were booed off the pitch at the break.
For much of his three years in London, Fernández has suffered because of his versatility. Because Caicedo plays in defensive midfield whenever he is available, and Cole Palmer is at his best as a number 10, Fernández is shunted around depending on who else is available. As Rosenior said of the midfielder last month, he is more than capable of playing a variety of roles.
“I love Enzo, because he’s world-class in all of the roles [in midfield]. You can play him as a deep-lying six, who can get on the ball and make 100 passes a game.“You could play him as an eight, as a box-to-box [midfielder], and he can arrive in the box and score goals, but also defend his own box.“And you can play him as a 10 because he can connect. He can create assists and score goals. He’s just a magnificent footballer. He gives me tactical flexibility for each game against different opposition.”
He is of great value due to that versatility, but it also means he rarely gets a consistent run in a single position. His goal on Saturday acts as an argument in itself that Fernández is at his best when afforded the freedom to crash into the opposition box. He excels at arriving late from central midfield, following in the footsteps of one of his predecessors in the Chelsea number-eight shirt.
Frank Lampard was one of the best in Premier League history at this particular skill, and while Fernández will never fully emulate one of the biggest legends in the club’s history, there are some similarities in how he arrives into the penalty area to meet crosses.
His recent output is getting towards Lampard territory. His goal against West Ham was his eighth in the Premier League this season, putting him seventh in the standings, and top among non-forwards. The timing of his run to meet João Pedro’s pass was just like something we would have seen of Lampard.
In all competitions since the start of the Club World Cup last summer, Fernández now has 12 goals and seven assists, leaving him fourth behind Erling Haaland (36), Rayan Cherki (21) and teammate João Pedro (20) for goal involvements among Premier League clubs. Just like this weekend, he is popping up with key contributions in big moments.
Having kept his cool to rifle home his high-pressure penalty at Napoli in midweek, a few weeks earlier, he arrived at the back post to rescue a point at Manchester City with another injury-time goal.
All six of his non-penalty Premier League goals this season have been from crosses or square balls into the box, and five of them have come from first-time finishes. His energy and relentless running are being rewarded with goals.
We can use Opta Vision data to quantify his movement by looking at his runs, which are defined as high-intensity off-the-ball movements from a player on the in-possession team. Only Florian Wirtz (562) has made more runs while his team is in possession in the Premier League this season than Fernández (536). As the below graphic shows, a great deal of his runs target the area around the penalty spot, just as he did for his winner on Saturday.
Looking at more specific run types, he stands out in several areas. He has made more runs to make himself available as a crossing option (81) than any other player in the Premier League this season. Only Wirtz (269) has made more runs into the final third than him (256). He ranks 11th for runs into the penalty area, but second among non-centre-forwards (97), behind only Harry Wilson (118). Meanwhile, only Bryan Mbeumo (69) has made more runs that have preceded his team having a shot than Fernández (57).
The Chelsea man is always on the go, and he makes things happen with his movement – more than any other player in the Premier League.
We can show this with a metric called expected threat (xT), which is defined as ‘the likelihood that there will be a shot within the next 10 seconds based on the position of the ball’. By comparing the difference between the xT of a team’s possession (based on the position of the ball) and the potential xT if a player is found with a pass to calculate the threat added by that player’s movement. So, if a player adds 0.05 xT with their run, they are increasing the likelihood of a goal by 5%.
By this measure, Fernández makes the most valuable runs in the Premier League; he is some distance ahead of anyone else when it comes to total xT added by his off-ball runs, with 27.4 xT, ahead of Phil Foden in second place, on 23.9 xT.
These numbers highlight just how much ground Fernández is covering; he moves from low-threat to high-threat areas more consistently and more often than anyone else in the top flight.
Each of his runs has averaged 0.06 xT added, which means he makes Chelsea 6.0% more likely to score every time he makes a high-intensity run when a teammate has the ball, which is the sixth-best rate in the Premier League among players to play at least 1,000 minutes. Unsurprisingly, Fernández has both played more minutes and made far more runs than any of them.
His lung-busting runs from deep are a big part of the reason that 2025-26 is already his most prolific season in front of goal, and we still have four months of it to go.
He is likely to add to his tally, too, with Chelsea still in all four competitions and Fernández unrivalled for availability. Going back to the start of the Club World Cup, he has made more appearances (42) and started more games (37) than any other Premier League player.
Attention now turns to the trip to Arsenal on Tuesday night, where Chelsea will take on the difficult task of trying to overturn a 3-2 first-leg deficit to make it to Wembley for the EFL Cup final. But following this weekend’s remarkable turnaround to make it six wins from seven since Rosenior took over, there will be renewed belief in the Chelsea ranks that a comeback, however unlikely, is still possible.
Changes will be made yet again, but one player who is sure to be on the pitch from the start – and will play a key role right until the very end – is Fernández, Chelsea’s tireless and relentless midfield engine.
Enjoy this? Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Chelsea’s Box-Crasher: Enzo Fernández Makes the Most Valuable Runs in the Premier League Opta Analyst.
Hence then, the article about chelsea s box crasher enzo fernandez makes the most valuable runs in the premier league was published today ( ) and is available on The Analyst ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Chelsea’s Box-Crasher: Enzo Fernández Makes the Most Valuable Runs in the Premier League )
Also on site :