Two Premier League games played for Chelsea under Xabi Alonso: two wins and seven goals scored. It’s the sort of start that would delight many new managers – only two other clubs can boast about a six-point start this Premier League season (albeit with Arsenal to play later on Monday). Points gained in this odd transitional phase, when almost nobody seems quite ready, could prove extremely valuable come the end of the season.
And yet, for all the attacking potency, there must also be concerns about Chelsea’s openness and the five goals conceded. Context must also be considered, and it projects both ways. It’s early in the season.
There has been, as ever, a lot of change at Chelsea. They will get better; they will achieve greater coherence. But equally there has to be a sense of realism about the nature of the teams they’ve played.
Brighton may have thrashed a shambolic Aston Villa 4-0 last weekend, but they were missing seven frontline players at Stamford Bridge and still put three past Chelsea on Sunday. And while Fulham looked very lively as Chelsea won 3-2 on the opening weekend, they couldn’t muster a shot on target against Sunderland on Sunday. Were Villa just terrible on that first weekend?
Was it really just Granit Xhaka’s appeal for Sunderland to be themselves again that made a side that had lost at Ipswich capable of dominating Fulham through midfield? It’s very hard at this stage to trace any patterns, other than perhaps to say that Xhaka’s performance against Fulham showed why Chelsea wanted to sign him in the summer. The systems are different, so the comparison perhaps isn’t entirely fair, but Xhaka, and his midfield partner Noah Sadiki, offered a level of control that Chelsea under Alonso have so far been entirely lacking – striking, given the degree of control Enzo Maresca insisted upon as manager last season.
Both Chelsea games so far have felt almost like a pastiche of the modern Bundesliga: all high tempo and turnovers, chaotic and fun and slightly unserious. This is not how it’s meant to be. Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen side, in which Xhaka was partnered in central midfield by one of Robert Andrich, Aleix García, or Exequiel Palacios, won the Bundesliga in 2024 conceding only 24 goals in 34 league games.
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