(Image credit: Getty Images)
The billions spent on young players and the constant churn for accountancy tricks, the erratic form and the bottom-half finishes: Chelsea are engulfed in an identity crisis of their own making and everybody knows Xabi Alonso needs a transitional year to sort this mess out.
What’s needed is stability, order, calm; qualities Chelsea’s owners carelessly abandoned across the first four years of their tech bro, move-fast-and-break-things philosophy. The decision to hire Alonso as ‘manager’ and not ‘head coach’ - and to allow over-30s into the training ground - tells us they have learnt their lesson.
But does Alonso, rocking up in this new and better environment, appreciate the chaos that came before him, that still hums in the background at Stamford Bridge? Judging by the instability, disorder, and erratic tactical setups this season, the answer is no. Alonso is a world-class coach, but he appears to be overthinking his tactics, which is the last thing such a tangled-up squad needs.
Scrambled shambles
Chelsea were a shambles in the first half thanks to a strange use of Cole Palmer
In nine Premier League matches, Alonso has used six different combinations in defence and five different combinations of a two-man midfield. As we have highlighted before, he made the strange decision to trial a Henderson-Barco pivot in the defeat at Brentford, and then he got found out by an even stranger strikerless 4-4-2 in the 2-0 defeat to Tottenham.
On Saturday, the tactical overthinking was a little harder to spot, but, again, complexity was unnecessarily introduced to a fixture against a Manchester United team waiting to be beaten. Chelsea were a shambles in the first half thanks to a strange use of Cole Palmer that scrambled brains in the middle of the park. When Alonso corrected his error with a far more normal 4-2-3-1 in the second half, Chelsea strode to victory.
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In that chaotic end-to-end first half, Chelsea consistently lost possession in the middle of the park (leading to quick United transitions, then quick Chelsea counters back the other way, hence the carnage) because Palmer’s position meant the passing lanes weren’t open. Chelsea, lacking depth (or ‘verticality’), could not pass forward in an orderly fashion and therefore could not maintain a solid shape:
Cole Palmer kept dropping to form a line across midfield, removing any forward-passing option
In the second half, Alonso normalised things by playing Palmer higher and suddenly Manchester United couldn’t cope with the passes through the lines.
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Palmer’s touches in the first half (above) are considerably deeper than in the second half (below)
Cole Palmer touches 2nd half (Image credit: Alex Keble)
Even the crucial opener was indirectly affected by this, with Manchester United players seemingly distracted away from Morgan Rogers by Palmer’s lurking presence.
Some of the hesitancy in the United defence can be explained by the danger Palmer posed
There is a clear lesson here for Alonso: his players – young, new to the club, recovering from the tornado that was 2025/26 – need a firm hand on the tiller; consistent team selection, simple patterns, and the opportunity to discover what it means to play for a normal club.
In other words, these players have spent enough time charging around in circles. They need to be taught how to walk before they can run.
Alex Keble is a freelance football journalist based in London, specialising in tactical analysis. He has written for BBC Sport, Goal, The Mirror, The Independent, Football 365, and many others. As well as covering Premier League football, Alex works as a child therapist.
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