Early season games are often overshadowed by absence, by the players who have left and the players who are yet to arrive. Chelsea’s 1-1 draw with Liverpool on the first weekend of the Premier League season, breezy and open as it was, was defined by the fact that both sides lacked a player at the base of midfield – a shortcoming shared by so many clubs that the price of central midfielders has risen to unprecedented levels.
At the final whistle of that game, as Enzo Fernandez and Alexis Mac Allister embraced, it came almost
