Wesley Fofana was a huge reason why Enzo Maresca’s game plan worked so well for the first hour of Chelsea’s 3-0 win over Aston Villa on Sunday.
Maresca set up his team to disrupt Villa’s preferred method of playing out from the back, with Nicolas Jackson applying an aggressive first line of pressure. Cole Palmer stuck close to Youri Tielemans in order to limit his opportunities to receive passes and progress the ball.
Behind them, Levi Colwill was encouraged to push well beyond Chelsea’s defensive line to track Morgan Rogers whenever he dropped into deeper areas for Villa.
That left Fofana all alone to manage Ollie Watkins, one of the Premier League’s most relentlessly mobile strikers. Deprived of many of their usual shorter passing options, the visitors tried to find him early and often.
Fofana made one big misjudgement in the first half, allowing Watkins to nick the ball around him from a searching John McGinn pass, and was bailed out by Robert Sanchez in the resulting one-on-one. On the whole, however, he got the better of that particular battle, helping to restrict Villa’s primary goal threat to two shot attempts and 17 touches in total.
Then, in the 56th minute, the body which constitutes Fofana’s biggest strength and his biggest weakness failed him again. He trod and slipped on the ball as he shielded it from Watkins, and felt something give way in his right hamstring.
“These kinds of things usually require three, four, five weeks (for recovery),” Maresca said in his post-match press conference. “In this moment, that means we lose him for 10 or 12 games. The way he was playing, it’s a big loss for us but we have more players and we can find a solution.”
To be precise, Chelsea have seven Premier League matches to play between now and the FA Cup third round, which is scheduled for the first weekend in January. There are also two Europa Conference League matches against Astana and Shamrock Rovers during that stretch, but neither will stress Maresca’s squad. Fofana was not even registered for the league phase of the competition in an attempt to manage his load.
It is in the Premier League where Fofana’s absence will be most keenly felt; he and Colwill have been Maresca’s starting centre-back pairing in 10 of the first 13 matches. While Villa was only their third clean sheet of the season, there have been plenty of indications that their highly complementary skill sets could yield a formidable partnership in time.
Colwill has impressed with his front-foot defending and is clearly Chelsea’s most accomplished passer out of the defensive third. Despite his numerous injuries, Fofana remains an exceptional Premier League athlete, possessing the speed to cover big spaces against highly mobile attackers as well as the vertical leap to dominate in the air in open play and at set-pieces.
Fofana has won 23 of his 33 aerial duels in the Premier League this season according to fbref.com, giving him a 69.7 per cent success rate that ranks fifth in the division among defenders with at least 10 matches played and 30 aerial duels contested. Colwill, for context, has won 19 of 35 aerial duels in 2024-25 (54.3 per cent success).
So which player will provide the “solution” that Maresca is looking for? Benoit Badiashile, Axel Disasi and Tosin Adarabioyo have at least been able to maintain match sharpness with a regular diet of Europa Conference League outings, meaning none should take long to get up to the speed and intensity of Premier League football.
Badiashile is the frontrunner. That much is clear from the fact that Maresca chose him to replace Fofana against Villa despite also having Tosin to call upon. Disasi did not even make the matchday squad. He had previously partnered Colwill in central defence as a second-half substitute against Liverpool at Anfield in October.
Soon after that game, there was a strong response from within Chelsea to suggestions that the club might consider selling Badiashile. He remains highly valued at Stamford Bridge despite falling below Colwill and Fofana in Maresca’s pecking order. The internal consensus is that he continues to make positive developmental strides and, at 23, has his best years ahead of him.
There are a lot of things to like about Badiashile. His strong, mobile frame is well-suited to the athletic and aerial demands of the Premier League and as a passer out of defence, he is the most comparable to Colwill. Maresca does not appear to have any concerns about fielding two left-footed centre-backs together and, in any case, Badiashile was deployed as a right-sided centre-back on numerous occasions during his Monaco career.
To succeed next to Colwill as Fofana’s deputy, however, Badiashile would need to eliminate the damaging lapses in concentration that have undermined some of his good games in a Chelsea shirt and punctuated many of his bad ones. The idea of him providing the last line of cover in front of Sanchez will be a particular source of unease for anyone who recalls his bizarre mis-control to gift Newcastle striker Callum Wilson a goal in last season’s Carabao Cup quarter-final at Stamford Bridge.
On the evidence of this season so far, Tosin is the likeliest alternative if Maresca decides he does not trust Badiashile. The former Fulham man was picked to partner Colwill the last time Fofana was unavailable for a Premier League match, due to suspension against Liverpool at Anfield in October.
He lasted just 53 minutes that day, his substitution coming shortly after he and club captain Reece James failed to account for Curtis Jones’ late run into the visiting penalty area which yielded the decisive goal in a 2-1 win for Liverpool. That sequence was an example of Chelsea struggling with Maresca’s desire to set ‘‘the Pellegrini offside trap’ on the edge of their box, and their 1.9 expected goals (xG) conceded at Anfield marks it out as one of their three worst defensive performances of the season.
Tosin has not appeared in the Premier League since, though he has been a part of two clean sheets against vastly inferior opposition in the Europa Conference League and highlighted his aerial ability with a goal in the 8-0 rout of FC Noah last month. He has so far looked a reasonable squad addition for Chelsea, though not a significant upgrade in any aspect of his game on Trevoh Chalobah.
Disasi would be the most surprising choice, given that Maresca has played him at centre-back for just 62 minutes this season, against Barrow in the Carabao Cup third round in September.
The noises coming out of Chelsea from the early days of pre-season were that Disasi was not considered technical enough to play in Maresca’s system. The Italian’s selection over the first five months of the campaign has done nothing to dispel that notion. The Frenchman’s few minutes as a nominal right-back, predominantly in the cup competitions, have felt more geared towards keeping a senior player involved and invested rather than priming him for a bigger role.
Disasi’s one Premier League start at right-back, away at Bournemouth in September, did not go well. He is nowhere near agile enough to deal with fleet-footed wingers and struggled mightily to contain Marcus Tavernier in one-on-one situations. He is a pure centre-back, and one with considerable qualities, even if they are not the ones most valued by Maresca.
A regular fixture under Mauricio Pochettino last season, Disasi is the most physically imposing of Chelsea’s centre-back options and faster than he looks, though not quite enough to convince when asked to defend large spaces. He is also a strong personality and communicative presence, which is why he has regularly captained the Europa Conference League side.
Maresca’s comments after the Villa win made it clear he considers Fofana to be a significant upgrade on all three of the established centre-back alternatives in his squad, particularly in games where Chelsea seek to press high and defend with almost half of the pitch behind them.
There are no perfect solutions but given Fofana’s injury record, this particular question was always likely to present itself at some point. Maresca’s success in finding an answer will have a significant impact on just how strongly Chelsea can finish 2024.
(Top photo: Robin Jones/Getty Images)
