Cesc Fabregás surpasses himself

He has provided the most assists and is joint second best scorer in the league behind Leo Messi.

Things have not started too well for Cesc Fabregás this season and it was towards the last months of last season with Guardiola, in which his performance dropped considerably and as a result lost his first team place.
His low point came in the league match against Valencia on 2nd September. The midfielder heard some whistles from the fans at the Nou Camp. Although it was only a few whistles, Andres Iniesta eventually replaced him and it looked like a bad sign.

However, from that moment on, everything changed and Tito Vilanova played an important part. The coach didn’t get carried away by the rejection of the fans and the criticism that Fabregás was receiving at the time. Tito also changed something around that had been haunting the midfielder: he was always one of three players to be substituted.

Response to Tito’s confidence in him

Tito then started to deal with Cesc differently. He boosted his confidence and sent him out after one game after another. And Tito played him for 90 minutes so that the player did not have the pressure of always being the first one substituted. The young man from Arenys de Mar, near Barcelona, got his confidence back with spectacular performances these last three months. The good news is that he’s started to score again and he did it at the Sanchez Pizjuan twice, being pivotal in the agonizing win for Barcelona in which they won by 3 goals to 2.

Those goals helped break a drought of nearly eight months without a goal. His last goal until then was scored in a Cup match against Valencia on 8th February. That game that was a turning point because from that moment on, the great Fabregas that the Barça fans had seen in the first few months of last season, had returned. His game was improving daily and his work rate and goal rate reflects this. Cesc has become the second top scorer with the goal that won this weekend’s game against Athletic Bilbao. He has matched David Villa who also has five goals.

But where Cesc has really shined has been in his goal assists. He’s the best passer on the team with a total of nine league goal assists. If he continues like this, he’ll beat his previous best of last season when he scored 15 goals with 16 assists.

Fabregás is comfortable in the starting eleven

Cesc’s momentum has created a problem for Tito and now the manager has had to make room for him. The footballer justified his substitution arguing that he was competing against three of the best players in the world for a place in the team: Xavi, Iniesta and Messi.

Tito has managed to incorporate all four at once. In five games this season so far, Vilanova has put the four in the starting lineup in detriment to one of the forwards. And his good form has led to Iniesta being played in from the left side again. This is not a new position for Andrés, but he hardly played in it last year.
The end result has been a tactical solution that has been very successful just lately because the four midfielders are constantly rotating their positions throughout the game, therefore misleading their opponents.