From the youthful zest of his early days at Arsenal, via Camp Nou and now as part of a reborn Chelsea squad running away with the Premier League, Fàbregas is coming of age under the Italian – and he has no intention of stopping yet

It was a throwaway line but you still knew what Cesc Fàbregas meant when, after comfortably eluding Swansea City’s grasp for 90 minutes, he was asked how he might envision the next stage of his career. “I think every time I plan something it never goes the way it’s supposed to.” If that speaks of past disappointments he could, at least, savour an afternoon in which everything came together by design.

Fàbregas chose the occasion of his 300th Premier League appearance – and first top-flight start of 2017 – to provide a best-of compilation; a highlights package in which he sharpened the knife, inflicted the wound and never quite let go against “very, very compact” opponents Antonio Conte decided would struggle with his subtlety from the start. Sometimes an afternoon works out perfectly for everyone and while his manager could take satisfaction from his own logic there was a sense of liberation in Fàbregas, whose professionalism in the face of a staccato season’s involvement has not gone unnoticed at Stamford Bridge.

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“Sometimes the easy way is to escape, to run away, to sulk and want to leave, to create a drama,” Fàbregas said. “But in my mind, I decided I wanted to challenge myself. Not everything comes easily in life and sometimes you have to fight certain situations you are not used to, or are against you in a way. But hopefully I have shown the manager can trust me.”

Despite the attentions of Jack Cork, the former Chelsea academy player primarily tasked with dulling his appreciation of space, Swansea’s midfield never really got near Fàbregas. Something akin to his neat take and jabbed finish that opened the scoring had been threatened even before the 19th minute; the slide-rule pass from which Pedro, who had created the first goal, beat Lukasz Fabianski rather too easily for the second helped ensure balance was restored, and that only told part of the tale.

Fàbregas also hit the crossbar and twice forced Fabianski into impressive saves, looking like the player who once scored 15 league goals in a season for Arsenal, his instincts prevailing when nudged up towards the attack. During the 2007-08 campaign, when the Spaniard was the poster boy for a young Arsenal side that should have won the title, Arsène Wenger described his freewheeling charges as “playerish”. It was a classic Wengerism, meaning both nothing and everything, but seemed made for the relationship on show between Fàbregas and Eden Hazard here. One dummy and sharp exchange of passes between the two after half-time saw a low Fàbregas drive tipped away; if pairing such natural footballers might have seemed a risk on other occasions for Conte, the results were at times mesmerising against Swansea.

The old zest was there and Fàbregas knew it. “I know I’ve played many more games than a 29-year-old is supposed to play, but I feel young in my mind,” he said. “I feel fresh. With Conte I’m learning new things, new situations, new manners and a new philosophy. It makes a difference, it makes it entertaining. Sometimes, if you think you’ve been playing for a long time and have won a lot, you realise that in football you can never know everything.”

That receptiveness – tying in with the improved maturity of a player who, by his own admission, “told people not even to speak to me” if he was dropped earlier in his career – reflects well on Fàbregas but also on Conte, whose management of those on the margins has been masterful. Conte admitted he has had “a lot of conversations” with players who have been left out this season but he is finding his frankness reciprocated. “I prefer to tell a bad truth than a good lie,” he said of his approach to players such as Fàbregas and Willian, whose positive attitude he also lauded. In return he has found a squad willing to mould itself to his ways.

“I think he came in and wanted to see if I could adapt, and I can understand that,” Fàbregas said of Conte. “As a player I’m someone who wants to play with the ball, maybe not so much the defensive side. But [this game] shows I adapted to the way he wants to play and hopefully I can play more.”

There was certainly little problem with Chelsea’s work off the ball even if it was, in fact, a touch of over-enthusiasm from N’Golo Kanté that won Swansea the free-kick from which Fernando Llorente headed an excellent equaliser. The outcome remained theoretically in doubt until a cutback by Hazard brought a crisp finish from Diego Costa, but Fàbregas and Chelsea had been comfortably superior in all areas.

This time, it was how things had been supposed to go. Even if you suspect Fàbregas’s alternative career trajectories meet somewhere on the Camp Nou pitch, he is no faded force and the odds on a successful continuation of his life at Chelsea may have fallen slightly. “China? I’m 29!” was the response to another question about how next season might pan out; it said plenty about the rejected destination but also for the continued motivation of a Premier League staple.