Chelsea dug deep to beat Leeds United 1-0 in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium on Sunday.<\/p>\n
They have now advanced to to the final for the 17th time. Only Manchester United and Arsenal boast a better record.<\/p>\n
Enzo Fernandez scored the decisive goal in the 23rd minute, heading Pedro Neto\u2019s cross into the bottom corner. <\/p>\n
Fernandez has now scored 13 goals across all competitions. Nottingham Forest\u2019s Morgan Gibbs-White is the only Premier League midfielder with a higher tally.<\/p>\n
Speaking after the game, interim boss Calum McFarlane praised the Argentina international.<\/p>\n
He told TNT Sports: \u201cThe most impressive thing about him is that he\u2019s a fighter. You don\u2019t have to have the perfect game plan in those moments \u2013 he will run and compete and that is often the deciding factor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernandez was outstanding against Leeds<\/h2>\n
Fernandez has been under scrutiny following comments in which he cast doubts over his future at Chelsea, leading to a recent two-match ban.<\/p>\n
However, the 25-year-old produced a brilliant performance against Leeds, silencing critics who have questioned his commitment.<\/p>\n
Deployed in the number ten role, Fernandez registered 79 touches, three of which came in the opposition box, and he was not dispossessed.<\/p>\n
He also completed 83 percent of his passes, eight of which were into the final third.<\/p>\n
The Argentine made three tackles, one block and one clearance. He recorded four recoveries and won 62 percent of his ground duels.<\/p>\n
McFarlane will be hoping Fernandez build on this momentum for the final five matches of the season.<\/p>\n
![\"Juventus](\"https:\/\/footballtoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/fbl-eur-c3-nantes-juventus-300x200.jpg\")
<\/div>\nChelsea are still aiming to qualify for the Champions League and beat Manchester City in next month\u2019s FA Cup final.<\/p>\n
Stats from fotmob.com<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chelsea dug deep to beat Leeds United 1-0 in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}