Fabregas and Matic: Chelsea cannot afford for both of them to have bad games

For the most part this season, Cesc Fabregas and Nemanja Matic have been dominant in games and have played a huge part in our challenge for the Premier League title week in, week out.

Now you can handle when someone is not at their best as normally, the ten other players carry them until the manager decides to replace them. However, when both of them or having bad games at the same time it causes us a real problem and that is exactly what happened yesterday.

Nemanja Matic

Let's be honest, he hasn't been the same since he came back from injury in the last two games. He looks a yard short of pace and doesn't have the same influence on the game.

You only have to look at the game yesterday, especially in the first half, to see that Matic struggled to cope with Southampton. Normally you would see him covering that area in front of the back four, mopping things up and winning tackles. Yesterday, he could not get anywhere near them and Southampton found so much space in behind our midfield line.

His tackle on Mane was ridiculous and it didn't help that Ivanovic was caught out by pace. Trying to get back in and make a tackle, that moment proved to me that he was way off of his game.

Cesc Fabregas

I would never ever dream of slating Cesc Fabregas because of the impact he has had at our club and because of the season he has had so far.

He is that good that he would know himself that his influence and performance wasn't good enough yesterday. He wouldn't need to be told by anyone else.

The crowd's instant reactions to when he gave the ball away, turned into trouble or lost ball wouldn't have helped and he also seemed a yard short in the game.

Chelsea look to Fabregas to orchestrate our attacking play. We look for him to dictate our game and to have a massive influence on our tempo. It was lacking against PSG and again yesterday and it hurt us.

He hardly ever has a bad game and it shocks us I guess when he does. Having Cesc have a bad game himself is bad enough but for him to have a shocker alongside Matic, we really, really struggled.

Let's hope yesterday was a one off.