Blues vs Magpies: Spanish Midfielder 'Civil War'

At 20:30 Beijing time this Saturday, Newcastle will play Chelsea away in the 15th round of the Premier League. In the previous 22 Premier League matches at Stamford Bridge, the Magpies won only one win.

Can the Magpies win points on the road with a back-to-back performance? To do that, their performance in midfield may be particularly important.

Under Conte this season, Fabregas has become Chelsea's mainstay. The Spaniard has only made 13 Premier League starts throughout the season, but has made 11 starts after 14 rounds so far this season. So far this season, Xiaofa's Premier League time in the Premier League has reached 973 minutes, a significant improvement from 177 minutes in the same period last season.

Creativity has always been a big feature of Fabregas' matches, in fact, in this season's Premier League (so far), only De Bruyne has created more opportunities in the game than Fabregas.

As one might expect, Fabregas has the most successful passes in Chelsea 's squad (767) and has more than 250 passes (623) in the half compared to his teammates. In addition, so far this season, he has also been impressive in running distance (133 km) – only Marco Alonso (161 km) and Azpilicueta (137 km) have better running distances than Xiaofa.

While being good at giving assists to teammates is a well-known virtue of Xiaofa – 110 assists so far in his career, second only to Giggs (162), the 30-year-old star will also set a remarkable scoring record if he scores against Newcastle: becoming the third Spaniard to score 50 goals in the Premier League.

Against the Blues, the player newcastle will try to stop Fabregas from scoring or assisting will be his compatriot Mikel Merino.

In a midweek draw with West Brom, the player who joined Dortmund this summer returned from injury and made his first start since October. Coach Benitez will be counting on the 21-year-old to return to the starting lineup and bring a transformation to the team, after all, the Magpies have only scored one point in their last five games.

On Saturday's visit to Stamford Bridge, Merino is expected to take on more defensive tasks, and although he has only started half of the team's matches so far this season, Merino has more downstrokes (28) and interceptions (15) than his teammates.

This season, Materidge has been a source of creativity for Newcastle, giving up five of the team's eight assists to date, but Merino's contribution to revitalizing the team is not too much, with more than 500 minutes less playing time, Merino's passes (445) and successful passes (345) are not too much behind Matric (467 and 358 respectively).

With Five of Newcastle's seven defeats so far this season missing Merino, the Spaniard's timely return could be a good calling for the Maes.

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