Cesc Fabregas goes missing during the second half of every season, and this one is no different. Every season, he starts on fire, and thanks to a scintillating first few months this time around, when his partnership with Diego Costa was in full bloom, Fabregas is still miles ahead of anyone else in the assist charts.

Then came the decay and decline. But this is nothing new, so much so that it may even have been expected by the Chelsea coaching staff.

In his three years at Barcelona, Fabregas managed 42 goals and won everything bar the Champions League. He was also the third most-used player at the club in his time there, only Javier Mascherano and Sergio Busquets played more than him during that period. Yet it's hard not to see him as a good player, lost in a sea of stars. The fact that there were so many others to pick up the slack might have explained his poor form towards the end of each season at Barcelona though.

During his time at Arsenal, it seemed unfair to pin the Gunners' own collapses on Fabregas. He pretty much held his team together for large swathes of the season towards the end of his time there, and maybe his own poor form could've been explained by the team's poor form, or the fact that he had to do so much to help out in the first months of the season.

But at Chelsea he is neither the undisputed star nor is he out shined by Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. And this just goes to prove Fabregas's post-christmas decline is a problem with the player himself. Whether his fitness levels or his concentration are to blame, or whether it's something else we don't know, but it's a definite phenomenon.

Barcelona even released a statement criticising Fabregas upon his departure last summer. They said: "From being someone who joined in with the attack, supplying and scoring goals, the magic tended to fade later on in each season.

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"He only scored one, six and one goals in the last 24 games of each season. For some reason, he was never as good in the second half of a season as in the first."

Now this is a catty thing to say about a player who scored 42 goals for your (‘more than a’) club, but it still says a lot about the Spanish playmaker.

The saving grace for Fabregas this season is that Chelsea can very much carry a passenger. They are comfortably ahead in the league, don't look like being caught - though it's certainly not impossible - and they will have no fixture pile-up as they look to complete the latest league and league cup double under Jose Mourinho.

The problem is that Chelsea have Diego Costa misfiring, too.

Though Chelsea can carry one passenger, they might struggle to carry more. Especially with the way the team is set up - clearly Mourinho wasn't keen on players who weren't pulling their weight.

Mohamed Salah, Kevin De Bruyne and Juan Mata were all offloaded, and all were binned because of their inability (or unwillingness) to track back and defend. Oscar and Willian are instead employed in the attacking midfield role, and these are players who will come into their own half to defend, or to track the opposition. Their defensive work rate is high, and this is exactly what Mourinho demands.

Yet the Special One is now in a position where his team are carrying at least one player who isn't pulling his weight. Chelsea are in an enviable league position, but poor end of season form is sometimes - though not always - an indicator of a poor start to the next, and Mourinho will need to guard against that, especially as his team is not set up to carry passengers at all.

And going further into next season, if Chelsea are to have a successful season next time around they'd probably want to do better in the Champions League, but this would mean having more games, and a tough run of fixtures towards the end of the season - and that's where the wheels came off last time around.

I'm sure Chelsea will strengthen in the summer, and they will still be a force in the league next season and be equipped with a squad that can deal with the fixture demands. But so will Manchester City. And Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal are starting to click more now and you can bet that they too will have their eyes fixed on Premier League glory next year.

Chelsea can carry Fabregas this season, winning games by virtue of their miserly defence and nicking a goal through the brilliance of the assorted varieties of attackers in the squad. But next season might be a different story, and Fabregas's disappearance towards to the end of the season needs to be looked at, because Chelsea might not be able to carry him next time around.

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