Gary Neville rounds on Chelsea’s midfield weak link after opening loss to Man City

Gary Neville believes that Enzo Fernandez is way out of his depth turning out in the Chelsea midfield in their current system after getting a good look at the player during their opening loss to Manchester City.

Chelsea went behind early on and generated only a handful of chances to bring the score level before former Blues star Matteo Kovacic out the result beyond doubt.

The match was the first look at how Chelsea would set up under new manager Enzo Maresca and Neville singled out one of his key players for some vehement criticism.

Fernandez was asked to step up for Chelsea in more ways than one as he took both a more advanced role in the midfield as well as the captain’s armband.

The Argentine was always going to be under scrutiny after a summer where he was filmed joining in on the singing of racially-charged and offensive songs in the wake of his national team’s Copa American win.

Fernandez captained the side in the absence of Reece James but Neville doesn’t feel that he carried himself like a skipper during the loss.

While he was deployed in the number ten role with Romeo Lavia and Moises Caicedo behind him, Fernandez was ineffective in the opening stanza in particular.

Fernandez had taken up the role at times under Mauricio Pochettino last term but Neville delievered a withering assessment of his efforts against Man City.

“Enzo Fernandez presses when he can’t win it a lot,” Neville said.

“He then throws up his arms to his team-mates as if to say “where were you?”. He is not kidding anyone.

“I thought Chelsea would take more a few more risks on the ball. But they have been quite basic. The Chelsea midfield are being run ragged.”

Despite the deflating defeat to start the season, Chelsea would put on a brave face with Lavia insisting they are right where they want to be at the moment.

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“I think there are a lot of positives to take from this game, we had a lot of chances,” Lavia said.

“We felt like we had the chance to get on top but it didn’t happen. They were clinical, but we had the chance to come back at times. When you play against good teams you know that these types of things can happen.

“It’s about learning from it. It’s only the first game of the season. There are 38 games in the season and as you can see something is growing, you can definitely see that on the pitch.

“Obviously, the result didn’t go our way today on the pitch, but I think the way we are playing and the way we are now is exactly where we want to be. We are taking the good things and focusing on the next game.”