Chelsea’s perfect yet unserious start to the Premier League season
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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.
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How good are Brighton? 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. They averaged 59.5% possession, whereas Chelsea so far this season have had just 32%. Perhaps when Moisés Caicedo returns to fitness – he managed 14 minutes from the bench on Sunday before being forced off again – his energy and mobility will bring an immediate improvement, but the way both Fulham and Brighton have at times sliced through Chelsea suggests there are structural issues.
The usual criticism of the 3-4-2-1 formation used by Chelsea is that it is too blockish, that creativity comes almost entirely from the two inside-forwards, making the side playing it predictable if they dominate possession. Its usage, at least in the Premier League, tends to have been as a counterattacking system – this is how, for instance, Oliver Glasner deployed it at Crystal Palace over the last two seasons. Two holding players operating in front of a back three should provide the trapezoid shape that has become the default for sides hoping to guard against the counter. Yet with Roméo Lavia alongside either Reece James or Malo Gusto, that solidity has been lacking.
Why, then, is Alonso’s system suffering the opposite problem? The issue really stems from a positive: Alonso’s 3-4-2-1 is not the blockish formation often seen. Rather it is a basis from which multiple variations stem. It has a variety that helps overcome a potential over-reliance on the two inside-forwards. That’s how, for instance, center back Maxence Lacroix ended up bursting through to set up a goal against Fulham. Breaking the lines and varying the pattern is part of the pattern.
The defensive concerns predate Alonso. It’s been 18 games since Chelsea last kept a clean sheet, their longest run in the top flight since 1961. While the signing of Emí Martínez should give them a more assertive, less error-prone figure in goal than Robert Sánchez in goal, there will be issues, at least in the short term, in getting the balance right at full-back. Plus, defences are best when they are stable, when interactions become automatic; while Lacroix is the sort of central defender Chelsea have been short of and will almost certainly make them better in the long term, and while Josh Acheampong, who played well against Fulham and came off the bench against Brighton, looks a hugely promising presence (he started only eight league games last season); incorporating both of them while adapting to a new goalkeeper will take time. There is a cost to the constant churn at Chelsea.
Arsenal, next Sunday, will provide a far stiffer test. Chelsea’s front three of João Pedro, Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer give them a puncher’s chance, but there is a chance Arsenal render them irrelevant by dominating the game through the midfield. They are two teams at very different stages of their development.
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