The decision to appoint Xabi Alonso as the next manager of the club has been met with a lot of excitement from the fans. Understandably so. He was the popular pick for most supporters. And to be honest, I feel like he was the standout one as well. With all due respect to the likes of Andoni Iraola and Marco Silva, they simply do not carry the same weight.
Alonso was an elite player in his day. He knows what it takes to compete at the highest level, having played for Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. He won the World Cup with Spain. That is creme de la creme.
As a manager, he was immense for Bayer Leverkusen. He took on a team that was hoping to avoid relegation and turned them into the German Bundesliga’s first and only Invincible champions. It did not work out at Real Madrid, but considering how things have turned out at the Bernabeu since his exit, the Spaniard might have been overachieving with them as well.
There is also a lot of excitement around the fact that he is supposedly going to be given more of a say than his predecessors at Chelsea. But Roy Keane does not sound convinced. He said while talking on Premier League Super Sunday:
Every decision is a risk, isn’t it? Whether it be Alonso-Chelsea, Carrick, there’s always a risk involved, and I still think managers don’t know until they get into the building. Micah’s made a point there. Will he be in charge of recruitment? These things we probably don’t know, and they might give him the thumbs up before he gets in the job, and then you get in there, and slightly different people move the goalposts. But it always seems a tough ask.
Is Roy Keane’s assessment of Xabi Alonso to Chelsea correct?
To be honest, it is hard to argue with Keane there. Some might say that he is always a bit negative about stuff. But that is spot on if you ask me. We cannot sit here and say that the Alonso appointment is guaranteed to work out. There are no guarantees in football.
Was Alonso the best option out there? Yes, at least in my opinion. That being said, there are far too many things that can go wrong. And they have at Chelsea in recent years.
For now, there is only one thing that can be said with certainty. It is that for the first time, BlueCo have made the popular choice and brought in the manager the majority of the fanbase wanted. That is a sign of change already. Hopefully, a lot more is to come over the coming months and years.
Xabi Alonso needs to be backed this summer
Alonso might have worked wonders with the Leverkusen squad, but that does not mean that Chelsea do not need to improve this summer. In the past, we have heard how the club are going to do exactly that, only for them to fall well short of expectations when the time comes.
That is something they cannot afford to do this time around. They cannot allow things to drag on and allow other clubs time to swoop in and sign their top targets.
They must move with certainty and intent. That might be tough to do, with no Champions League football to offer and financial boundaries to work within. But if there is to be any hope things working out, it is by doing that.