There’s a question that’s plagued me for a long time now, one that predates the takeover:
What are Chelsea about?
It used to be obvious. Roman Abramovich bought the club in 2003 and spent a bomb before sacking Claudio Ranieri and hiring José Mourinho. Chelsea’s identity became the ruthless winners: they weren’t embarrassed about spending big, about their lack of history, about their often unattractive football. It wasn’t a bug that they sacked their managers all the time. Chelsea were uncouth to old money clubs, but that almost felt like it became part of the point. They knew everyone complaining about them secretly wished Abramovich had bought their club instead.
This run lasted, largely successfully though with some ups and downs, under Mourinho, Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Guus Hiddink, Carlo Ancelotti, Andre Villas Boas, Roberto Di Matteo, Rafa Benítez, Mourinho again, Hiddink again, then Antonio Conte. When Maurizio Sarri arrived in 2018 he, like Villas Boas before him, tried to get Chelsea to adapt to a more cohesive possession-based style. The results were fine, but no one really bought into the project, so he left after a year and that would normally mean another big name manager with a completely different type of football. But Chelsea were given a one year transfer ban, which meant the usual “new manager and a couple of big signings” model wasn’t an option. So they tried something different.
Chelsea had spent a lot of money on a rather excellent academy, and some at the club were growing increasingly frustrated that managers were not using this talent in the first team. Frank Lampard came onboard with a brief of changing that. He came in with a brief of playing the kids, attacking football, identity, heritage. “We are Super Frank’s Chelsea, and yes, we now have history”.
It wasn’t rocket science, but it worked pretty well in its first season. Chelsea finished in the top four (something many predicted they’d fail at) with Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham, Reece James, Fikayo Tomori and Callum Hudson-Odoi all playing their part. The following summer, when they were able to sign players with the huge wad of cash from selling Eden Hazard a year earlier, they spent big without a clear plan, and Lampard was sacked in January to be replaced by Thomas Tuchel. The new manager figured out how to make things work pretty much immediately and ended the season winning the Champions League. Normal service resumed. Then things got rockier the next year, and we’d fully expect the usual routine: hire a new manager, change the style of football, make a few big signings.
But the world had different ideas. I do not want to get sued under Britain’s famously strict libel laws, so let’s just say some big geopolitical things happened that meant Abramovich suddenly sold Chelsea in 2022. The club was bought by BlueCo, an American consortium fronted by Todd Boehly with the majority of the cash coming from Clearlake Capital (with Behdad Eghbali the most actively involved Clearlake figure).
Clearlake also sack a lot of managers and buy a lot of players, but it’s a lot harder to understand the plan. They aggressively sign young players and hire “project” managers, but give up on both as soon as things get rocky. The charitable notion is that they’ve been searching for the right fit. The less charitable notion is that they don’t know what they want.
Graham Potter, Mauricio Pochettino, Enzo Maresca and Liam Rosenior and now were all supposed to fit into broadly the same vision. They’re managers who, whether their Chelsea sides actually did this or not, theoretically play high pressing, high possession attacking football with an emphasis on developing and improving young players. Regardless of what actually happened, I think we can assume this is what BlueCo want.
Alonso is an obvious fit. I mean, he’s Alonso. Unless you’re alarmingly young, you saw him ping those crossfield passes. He’s one of the great Spanish passing midfielders. His Bayer Leverkusen side played a possession-dominant style of the sort you’d broadly expect from someone who played under Pep Guardiola. That seemed to be the style he was trying to implement at Real Madrid. And this is what BlueCo have looked for over and over. Alonso, we thought, was going to be another “control games with slow possession” manager.
In their first two games, Chelsea have averaged 32% possession. They won them both.
Now, I’m fairly confident they will end the season with over 50% possession because that’s just what happens when you’re the bigger and richer club than most of your opponents. But this is still very interesting. When Chelsea went 3-0 up against Brighton after 32 minutes, their instinct was not to suffocate the game with stale possession. Alonso has decided that possession is not essential to how he wants to play football. Chelsea’s goals so far have largely come in fast breaks. There will be games when those opportunities aren’t there and they need to find another answer, but they’re nice goals if you can get them.
Alonso brought four members of the coaching staff with him from Real Madrid (Sebastian Parrilla, Alberto Encinas, Ismael Camenforte and Beñat Labaien), which makes it even more of a surprise that the football looks different. He’s obviously adapting to the players, but he had choices here that he could’ve made differently. Alonso seemed entirely relaxed about letting a passing midfielder like Enzo Fernández leave the club without a similar replacement. This does not look like a squad being shaped to play Juego de Posición.
Emi Martínez has come in from Aston Villa to replace Robert Sánchez. We can have opinions on Martínez as a goalkeeper until the cows come home, but I don’t think he represents a huge change in style of play. In front of him, Alonso has favoured a back three so far. He’s been clear that he’s not dogmatic about formations that can shift in possession anyway, but this is what he’s decided to use right now.
It makes sense for a variety of reasons across the pitch, but let’s start at the back. Levi Colwill’s left footedness is a big bonus for the system and opens up passing options, avoiding some of the horrible passing it along the back that you sometimes see with a right-footed left centre back who plays it sideways because he can’t open up the game. “We know the best qualities of Levi when he is important on the build-up, more on this left channel, not so on the wing, when he has a different diagonal that he is able to see, not just what is on his flank, that he is able to find the pocket [on the other side],” Alonso explained recently. At the same time, new signing Maxence Lacroix has been playing in the middle of defence, with Wesley Fofana and Josh Acheampong each getting minutes on the right. Defending on the outside of a back three can become more about covering larger open spaces, while in the middle it tends to focus on “traditional” skills such as heading the ball and organisation. I think the balance they have right now should be fine, and they do have depth with Reece James able to play here in a pinch.
Jorrel Hato and Malo Gusto appear to be the first choice wing-backs right now. Pedro Neto played there against Brighton, but with Pep Chavarría and Marco Palestra now on the books, I don’t think we’ll see him there very often. That Alonso strengthened his wing back depth suggests he wants specialists here, not players who would be more useful elsewhere.
On the other hand, James would seem like his most natural wing back. And yet he’s clearly seen as a central midfielder by Alonso. “I would say that he's very comfortable, very confident playing in that position”, the manager explained. “He has the intelligence to play there […] he will have a lot of minutes in there as a first midfielder”. I don’t think there’s much question that James is capable of playing in central midfield, but it changes the equation. When you partner him with Roméo Lavia or Moisés Caicedo, you’ve got a more vertical midfield. This isn’t built to sustain possession or find intricate passing movements. It’s less pausa and more… whatever the Spanish word is for the opposite of pausa. When this works, it should help with the fast transition football we’ve seen so far. When it doesn’t… we could see some awkward passing around with no way through against set defences.
This really does make me wonder what the plan is. “What we want is that we are able to adapt”, Alonso says. “For sure there will be games that we have a lot of possession and struggle to score against teams that defend in a low block. But to have different tools, to have different ideas how to do it, and to have different approaches, is good.” We still have no idea what the tools and ideas are when struggling against a low block. It apparently doesn’t require passing midfielders who can be patient and wait for spaces to open up.
The front three have obviously clicked so far. Cole Palmer has thrived, though he’s been given space where he wants it. This system lets him float as a number ten without issue. Morgan Rogers is an interesting foil to Palmer, making runs and being more tactically disciplined. I’ll admit I’ve never been Rogers’ biggest fan, with a lot of his price tag coming from overperforming xG with long range shots. But he’s been making good runs so far and can be tidy in possession, balancing Palmer’s risk taking on the ball. João Pedro is just a good striker at this point, even if you’d like him to be taking at least an extra shot per game compared to last season. If Palmer is firing again, that might just happen anyway.
But none of this answers the fundamental question: what are Chelsea trying to do with Alonso? What is the project? What is this supposed to look like in two years?
Alonso was supposed to provide some kind of answer on what BlueCo era Chelsea are about. Now I don’t even know what Alonso is about.
Great fucking job by me here. You’re reading this expecting me to explain it and I’ve just made you more confused. Let’s check in again later in the season.
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By Grace Robertson · Hundreds of paid subscribers
The Premier League and other football (soccer) nonsense.