Beautiful football with purpose: Fabregas and Chelsea continue their impossible love affair

There used to be a time when we feared November.  Winter was coming and we ran for cover.  "Not in the face!" we screamed.

But then, a strange thing happened.  November has been wonderful, knock on plastic flag.  And one of the main reasons for that has been Cesc Fàbregas.  I guess all we need to break the curse of November was to learn to love an ex-Arsenal and ex-Barcelona man.

For his part, all season long Fàbregas has had nothing but ecstatic praise for Chelsea, for Jose, for his teammates, for the fans, for our football, for our style, for our aims, and, most importantly, for our ambitions.  Because despite all that Arsenal DNA in his system, Cesc recognizes that style without substance (i.e. trophies) is entirely useless.

"I didn't come here to just play well and that's it. I came here to win trophies and if I could play well and enjoy myself, the better."

Fàbregas was tremendous (again) against Schalke -- our community player ratings aren't alone in such praise -- but he's taking joy not just from his own excellent performances, but from the way the entire team is clicking.  He reserves special mention for his understanding with Oscar, which is especially great since their interplay was one of our main concerns heading into this season.

"I feel right now I am playing one of the best football of my career."

[...]

"There will be games I cannot enjoy myself the way I am [against Schalke] because other teams will approach games differently.  But the most important thing for me is we know what we are doing, we know when we defend, when we have to attack, when we slow the pace, go quicker.  I think right now, we are doing that very, very well.

"I feel more in control of the game.  I touch the ball all the time, I feel happy, I go and get the ball from here, from there, I can go forward, Oscar drops deep. I feel free, I feel confident, I feel in control and that's what I like the most in football."

"Sometimes in the last three, four years in the national team and Barcelona, I was playing like a number nine.  I mean I have to do it for the team and I enjoy, and it's all good. But, here, where I am playing today this games, it's where my football I enjoy the most."

At some point, we (probably) will experience a dip or a bad moment or a few bad results.  None of the trophies are guaranteed yet.  But for now, life is great and everything is awesome at Chelsea.