Chelsea’s renaissance under Xabi Alonso is evident in their goals, but the truly beautiful transformation in their game is discipline. The Blues are yet to be shown a red card in the Premier League this season, a staggering turnaround for a team that lived on the proverbial (and unhinged) edge last season.
Chelsea amassed eight league red cards last season. It was a club record and four more than any other side in the Premier League. Only Tottenham Hotspur (99) exceeded their 90-booking total, but this season they have picked up just 13 yellows, putting them at only 10th in the division.
Across all competitions, nine different Blues players were sent off, ranging from Robert Sanchez between the sticks to Liam Delap up front. Add in Malo Gusto, Trevoh Chalobah, Wesley Fofana, Marc Cucurella, Moises Caicedo, Pedro Neto and Joao Pedro. Nine players were dismissed, and 11 red cards were shown in all, once Fofana’s second and Enzo Maresca’s are counted.
The consequences of these red cards reverberated around the club, both on and off the pitch. Caicedo’s dismissal against Arsenal last November meant a three-match ban that proved painful, as Chelsea managed only four points from the three games he missed. Fofana’s second red of the season on the final day at Sunderland then helped condemn the Blues to 10th place and a summer without European football.
Alonso has brought a new ethos to the Chelsea dressing room, as players who previously lost their tempers have learned that staying on the pitch is actually a big part of the job description. Meanwhile, the 2-0 win at Everton on Saturday saw the Blues keep a Premier League clean sheet for the first time since January. It wasn’t a classic game, with four Chelsea players booked in a fiery encounter, but Alonso’s men managed to stay at the first yellow.
That is the make-up of a title-challenging team: win ugly when your attack struggles badly, and avoid handing the opposition the initiative through stupid disciplinary errors. Arsenal, last season’s champions, did not have a single player sent off in the league.
Tottenham Hotspur visit Stamford Bridge on Saturday in a London derby that has never been short on incidents. So this article is a reminder of the importance of discipline for Chelsea. Keeping 11 men on the pitch could prove just as crucial to their ambitions as any goal.
‘Not Acceptable’ – Liam Rosenior’s Warning That Xabi Alonso Has Finally Answered
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The problem of discipline was not lost on Alonso’s predecessors at Stamford Bridge last season. After Pedro Neto was dismissed in the Blues’ 2-1 defeat at Arsenal in March, then-head coach Liam Rosenior conceded the issue needed attention.
Rosenior called the club’s disciplinary record ‘not acceptable’, arguing there was an underlying problem that needed addressing. Neto’s red card was the 10th of the season for Chelsea, in all competitions, including Enzo Maresca’s sending off against Liverpool. Rosenior had long made it clear the situation could not be ignored.
He never got the chance to act, as five consecutive Premier League defeats saw him dismissed from his role. Five months after Fofana’s red card in the final game of the season at Sunderland, his eventual successor seems to have delivered the change he said was so desperately needed.