No one has made more Premier League appearances under Enzo Maresca than the manager’s namesake in midfield, Enzo Fernandez.

Across two seasons and 54 games, the Argentine racked up over 4,500 league minutes for Chelsea with Maresca in the dugout, during which time only Bruno Fernandes and Mohamed Salah created more chances from open play.

The manager has since taken up the job at Manchester City, but according to reporting in The Athletic’s DealSheet on Tuesday, he is keen on a reunion with one of his most trusted players.

With World Cup-winning captain Rodri potentially leaving City, the club have already dug deep to bring in Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest for £116million ($153m). Lille midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi, 18, is also heavily linked, while the likes of Nico Gonzalez, Tijjani Reijnders and Mateo Kovacic remain at the club. Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki take up more advanced, creative roles, while Rico Lewis and Nico O’Reilly are nominally full-backs, but can also tuck inside to provide even more cover in the centre of the pitch.

Even with expected departures, City would seem to be well-stocked.

But Maresca’s interest in reuniting with Fernandez persists for a quoted valuation of at least £120m.

So what exactly does Maresca see in his former midfielder? And how different is he to the other options that City already have?

Life after Rodri could soon become a daunting reality for City should his move to Barcelona materialise before the end of the month.

His departure after seven seasons would have seismic implications on the way that City can play; no other midfielder combines his passing quality with his instinctive sense of defensive positioning — or at least be able to come in and start performing straight away — allowing team-mates to push on without fear of being hit on the break.

Under Maresca. City’s recruitment drive looks to be aimed towards replacing the sum of Rodri’s parts. In Anderson, they have a player with athleticism, a tireless runner who made more defensive recoveries than any other player in Europe’s top five leagues last season.

Bouaddi is similarly snappy without the ball, but has potential to become a peerless tempo dictator from deep.

Fernandez would bring a more immediate aspect to the post-Rodri midfield: attacking intent, and plenty of late runs into the box.

The idea would likely be for Anderson to patrol deeper while Fernandez drifts forward, but their technical quality would allow them to rotate. Either can get forward or link play at the base of midfield while Foden or Cherki take up their preferred positions further on.

Fernandez would bring a talent for timing his off-ball movements to arrive just in time to sweep home cut-backs or finish from the edge of the penalty area, an invaluable skill as City work the ball methodically towards the box.

The pizza charts below use SkillCorner data to analyse how midfielders across Europe’s top seven leagues move without the ball per 30 minutes of team possession.

Both Anderson and Fernandez rank highly when it comes to supporting the build-up, but while Anderson’s forward runs are more geared towards underlaps — attacking the space inside to take players away from advanced full-backs and wingers — Fernandez aims to crash the dangerous areas inside the box, as shown by his high cross receiver rating.

Given that both players naturally drifted more to the left last season, it would create an interesting dynamic with O’Reilly, a dangerous attacking full-back who also likes to mix up his off-ball movement to pull the opposition apart.

Digging further into SkillCorner’s data, Fernandez made 42 cross receiver runs that led to a team shot within 10 seconds. Only four players managed more in the Premier League last season, but Fernandez is the only name in the top 10 who does not play as a centre-forward.

Mapping those off-ball movements onto the pitch helps to illustrate the variety of Fernandez’s movement, making diagonal runs from both the left and the right, while also frequently starting his movements from close to the half-way line, difficult runs for defenders to track when the timing is right.

Whenever the ball is worked wide into a promising position, the 25-year-old is rarely far away.

Below against West Ham United, we see Maresca’s team set up in a shape that could be mirrored at City.

They build in a three, with one full-back (Marc Cucurella in this instance) tucked inside and another (Malo Gusto) up high and wide. City’s right-back Matheus Nunes would be suited to the Gusto role here, while O’Reilly or Josko Gvardiol would both be strong options to take Cucurella’s position and pick their moments to get forward.

Moises Caicedo is the sole receiver — which may be where we see Anderson — while attacking midfielders and wingers form a five across the attacking third, with the big striker Liam Delap up top.

Fernandez takes up that spot in the left half-space, where he most frequently receives the ball.

As the move develops with neat combination play down the opposite flank, Fernandez continues to linger before spotting his opportunity to attack in frame two.

With centre-back Jean-Clair Todibo watching the ball, he attacks his blindside and steals a march on Aaron Wan-Bissaka, in position to tap home Estevao’s simple ball across the face of goal.

Fernandez’s movement is elusive, choosing his moments to hang back, and picking up on signals from his team-mates to be aggressive and attack the space.

Here against Brighton & Hove Albion, we see the familiar build-up shape, this time with Joao Pedro playing up front.

The Brazilian drops into midfield, pulling centre-back Jan Paul van Hecke out of position, a sign for Fernandez and his midfield partner Andrey Santos to look for gaps up ahead.

Joao Pedro knocks the ball back to Caicedo, who finds a defence-splitting pass down the flanks for Reece James.

Having made his move early, Fernandez is perfectly placed to attack the blindside of makeshift defender Carlos Baleba, arriving on cue to head home the cross.

City have a similar profile in their squad in Reijnders, another box-to-box midfielder who can exploit the gaps with runs from deep.

But despite a strong start to his City career, the Dutchman has struggled to nail down a place, not quite able to slow play down and dictate tempo in quite the same way as some of his ultra-talented team mates.

Fernandez would have no issues adapting to such responsibility on the ball, with his player role dashboard below illustrating his ability to impact the game across all phases. Classified as an all-action midfielder, he moves possession forward confidently, evades pressure, and also finds time for those storming runs into the box to offer threat in the final third.

We see Fernandez’s energetic movement and versatility in the build-up to another chance against Aston Villa.

To begin with, he drops deep to support the build-up, rotating into Jorrel Hato’s spot on the left of defence and pushing the defender on. As the move progresses, he offers an overlapping run for Alejandro Garnacho out wide, before drifting inside to linger in his favourite spot between the lines.

Once again, the move develops out wide after great work from Caicedo, and Fernandez spots his opportunity to get forward, arriving just in time for the cut-back that Cole Palmer eventually overhits.

For Fernandez to join such a busy midfield would say a lot about Maresca’s faith in the likes of Reijnders, Gonzalez or Kovacic to perform in such varied roles. Fernandez himself is not always the most authoritative defender when the opposition look to counter, not as athletic or as springy as the likes of Anderson or Caicedo, but his attacking output and diverse skillset on the ball justifies his inconsistency without it.

He would not come cheap, and alongside Anderson and Bouaddi, would take City’s outlay to over £300m for three new midfielders.

But Fernandez would offer guaranteed output with those box-crashing runs, and fit seamlessly into a familiar system in a lighter shade of blue.

Bruno Guimaraes’ £75million move from Newcastle United to Arsenal gives more supporting evidence to several recent themes.

At 28 years old, the sizeable outlay on the Brazilian midfielder continues Arsenal’s ploy of spending big money on players who can immediately improve their first team. A year ago, their roughly £185million in fees on players aged over 24 was the most ever spent on that cohort by an English club in a single season. A first Premier League title in 22 years comprised proof of concept.

Meanwhile, Guimaraes leaving Tyneside, where he was the club’s talisman, adds him to the list of recent high-profile departures and more grounds for Newcastle’s transformation into an impressive seller. Alexander Isak, Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali (and head coach Eddie Howe) have all vacated St James’ Park since last September.

In the 12 years to the end of June 2025, Newcastle generated £352million from player sales. A reasonable estimate, even after sell-on clauses and solidarity payments to former clubs, has them matching that figure inside the past 12 months.

Such statistics say lots about where Arsenal and Newcastle are as clubs, but the Guimaraes deal also underscores what is fast becoming a Premier League motif: the richest teams are ever more frequently plucking the best players from the rest of the division.

Guimaraes’ transfer is the 10th instance this summer of one of the ‘Big Six’ — Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur — acquiring players (often the best ones) from the other 14 clubs in the top tier.

He follows where Morgan Rogers, Elliot Anderson, Tonali, Maxence Lacroix, Jan Paul van Hecke, Youri Tielemans, Danny Welbeck, Marcos Senesi and Jordan Henderson have already trodden (backup goalkeepers Illan Meslier and Karl Darlow have made similar moves as free agents). 

Initially, that might not seem worthy of much note.

The Welbeck and Henderson deals are not of the same ilk as the rest and, in any case, there has long been a pecking order in football, mirrored on and off the pitch. The richest clubs can buy the most talented players, making their teams better and them more attractive than previously, thereby enticing more players to follow suit; a virtuous cycle of dominance. Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson routinely signed the best from the rest.

Yet research carried out by The Athletic shows the trend is rapidly intensifying.

Using a methodology that takes the six highest-earning clubs in a given Premier League season (which has been those same ‘Big Six’ teams since 2009) and counting the combined number of signings from the rest of the division, excluding no-fee, backup goalkeepers, like those Meslier and Darlow deals, and intra-‘Big Six’ moves like the one which recently took Andrey Santos from Chelsea to Manchester United, we find that particular flow of transfers is at an all-time high, even as middling to lower-end Premier League teams enjoy greater wealth than ever.

Last summer, 11 players moved from a non-‘Big Six’ club to a ‘Big Six’ one, with all six of the latter getting in on the act. In January, Manchester City’s signings of Antoine Semenyo and Marc Guehi, the best players at Bournemouth and Crystal Palace respectively, took the 2025-26 tally to 13.

That was a new record and only once before has the number of moves hit double figures. That came in 2014-15, in a year where the richest opportunistically pilfered a couple of less wealthy clubs who had shown themselves highly adept at scouting and youth development. Of that season’s 10 Other 14-to-‘Big-Six’ moves, five were departures from Southampton and three involved players leaving Swansea City.

Over the past 14 months, 23 of these deals have taken place, in what amounts to a mass transfer of the best talent from the less-well-offs to the richest. Unlike 12 years ago, predation isn’t centred on a minority; 11 different Premier League clubs have lost players to the ‘Big Six’ since the beginning of last summer.

Naturally, that has conferred significant financial benefit to the selling clubs. Those 23 transfers have come at a combined cost of almost £1.2billion, which can hardly be sniffed at. Those sums allow, to an extent, sellers to reinvest in talent from elsewhere, improving as a result. Combined with more money than ever from domestic prize-money distributions, the Premier League’s middle has probably never been stronger. Repeated English wins in the finals of the Europa League and UEFA Conference League speak volumes.

Yet there’s also a growing inevitability to those clubs losing their stars to domestic rivals, an event occurring far more frequently than before and which further solidifies the hierarchical structure of English football.

Under Ferguson, it was taken as written that United would, sooner or later, obtain the brightest stars from clubs lower down the table. Between 1994 and 2006, the likes of Teddy Sheringham, Dwight Yorke, Rio Ferdinand and Wayne Rooney all moved from less-minted teams to Old Trafford. In 12 seasons, nine of those transfers occurred.

Today, United’s Mancunian rivals City have completed five of them in just over 12 months. Chelsea have done six, albeit Welbeck and Henderson aren’t the same as procuring key players around their peak years. Spurs are on four, Arsenal and Manchester United have three apiece while Liverpool bring up the rear on two but, of course, one of those was the British-record signing of Isak from Newcastle.

Chelsea have now gobbled up 17 non-‘Big Six’ players in the past decade, something which speaks to both their rampant transfer activity and a seeming preference for young players already proven in England’s top division.

Most pilfered of anyone in recent seasons are Brighton & Hove Albion, where, since the summer of 2021, 10 players have departed for a ‘Big Six’ club. Five of these — Moises Caicedo, Marc Cucurella, Joao Pedro, Robert Sanchez and now Welbeck — went to Chelsea. 

Why the intensification?

One reason is obvious: the rich clubs are richer than ever.

In 2024-25, the average turnover of a ‘Big Six’ club was £635million — and this in a year where three of them didn’t play in the Champions League. The average turnover at the remaining 14 Premier League teams that season was £214m, a gap of £421m.

That gap has never been larger and, save for the two seasons hit by the pandemic, has grown every year since 2011. Since Covid-19, average revenues among the ‘Big Six’ have increased by £189million, more than three times the increase at other Premier League clubs. The elite can now offer far more, both in wages and trophy-hunting opportunities. 

Compounding the issue are football’s financial rules.

Those have long allowed the richest teams to spend more, being predicated on at least some pretence of sustainability, but the shift to a squad cost ratio rule tethered to club revenues has not strengthened the bargaining position of the less wealthy.

Even as the Premier League has allowed its members to spend a higher proportion of income than the 70 per cent rule which applies to those competing in Europe, a distinction nosed on ‘protecting the competitive balance of the Premier League’, the revenue gulf is so vast that the division’s richest are still able to spend far more than anyone else. And those successful clubs from below are soon whacked with the stricter UEFA rules when they perform well and finish higher up the table.

What’s more, the averaging-out, under the Premier League’s squad cost ratio, of player profits over three years, while worthwhile from a sustainability point of view, as it discourages one-off sales to dig clubs out of a hole, means spending limits are further restrained unless teams can consistently sell players for big profits.

Where the largest earners can afford to spend heavily year-on-year, the rest are beholden to peaks and troughs. The need to sell, allied with the allure inherent at clubs who regularly compete for honours and pay their players in accordance with those aims, results in the increased flow of talent up the chain that we’re now seeing. That’s true even of those teams, heavily backed by their owners, trying to push their way into the elite; it is no coincidence that, at the time of writing, the three largest net sellers this summer are Newcastle, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest.