Chelsea's Defensive Woes: Alonso's Challenge
The noise around Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea has been all about the fireworks. Patterns, rotations, the relentless menace of JP Morgan in full flow. Every game, at least one goal. Usually more. You can’t stop them scoring.
You just can’t trust them to keep anything out.
Chelsea’s 2-2 draw with Hull was another reminder that this project is only half-built. Twenty Premier League games in a row now without a clean sheet. Different managers, different systems, same old leak.
Emi Martinez was supposed to be the upgrade, the World Cup winner behind a new era. The multiple Yashin Trophy winner, a statement signing. But if the players in front of him switch off, if they don’t do the basics, he might as well be Robert Sanchez again. No goalkeeper looks elite when his defence keeps handing out chances.
Hull didn’t slice Chelsea apart with intricate moves. They didn’t need to. Their 1.32 expected goals told the story of a team invited into dangerous areas far too often at Stamford Bridge. Loose marking. Poor clearances. Second balls lost. Half-open doors everywhere.
This Chelsea side can overwhelm you going forward. The potential is obvious and, for supporters, intoxicating. But the balance is badly skewed. Alonso learned his trade under Jose Mourinho, a coach who built empires on defensive control and ruthless organisation. Those lessons now need to surface.
If Chelsea are serious about challenging, the conversation has to shift. Less about how you stop JP Morgan. More about how Chelsea start stopping anyone at all.
Because until Alonso fixes the back line, his team will keep playing wild, open games that delight the neutrals and drain the points column. At some stage, the entertainment has to give way to a harder edge.
Iraola’s Liverpool hit their first real wall
Anfield bounced on Wednesday night as Andoni Iraola claimed the first Champions League win of his coaching career, against Atletico Madrid of all teams. That moment felt inevitable at some stage this season.
The bigger question always lurked behind it.
How would Iraola cope when the schedule turned brutal? At Rayo Vallecano and Bournemouth he impressed without the grind of European football. Liverpool is a different world: midweek intensity, then a Premier League opponent smelling weakness three days later.
Fulham arrived as the first proper examination of that reality. Liverpool 0-0 Fulham. A flat afternoon, a failed test.
Liverpool never hit Iraola’s trademark tempo. They started slowly and never really escaped that gear. Fulham grew in belief, then in control. By the end, Marco Silva’s side looked just as likely to snatch all three points as protect their first of the campaign.
Iraola’s unbeaten run as Liverpool boss survives, stretching back to early January when he was still at Bournemouth. The numbers look tidy enough on the surface. But home games against Nottingham Forest and Fulham have produced only two points. For a team with title ambitions, that’s a warning light.
Asked whether fatigue was the reason, Iraola didn’t hide.
“In the end, this is the easier one, for me, for you, for everyone - our players were tired. I think there is a lack of freshness, definitely. We cannot hide it,” he admitted. The turnaround was brutal: around 60 hours between a huge Champions League night and a tricky league fixture. “But this is going to happen more times, maybe with one more day, maybe.”
The schedule will not ease. The expectation at Liverpool never does.
The tactical ideas are clear. The intensity, when it comes, is ferocious. But Iraola now has to show he can rotate, adapt and still win ugly when the legs go heavy. That’s the leap from promising coach to elite operator. And the games are coming fast.
Spurs spend big, but the goals go missing
You don’t need a scouting badge to see Tottenham’s problem. They don’t score. And if you don’t score, you don’t win.
Four hundred minutes without a league goal. No wins in the Premier League this season. Tottenham 0-0 Everton was just the latest chapter in a start that already feels worryingly familiar.
Spurs are not short of creativity. They have technicians everywhere, and most of them were on the pitch against Everton. The build-up play looks neat, the positions are clever, the patterns rehearsed.
Then you look at the man who is supposed to finish it all off. And you barely notice him.
Dominic Solanke’s importance to this side is obvious and uncomfortable. As the only genuine number nine available to Roberto De Zerbi, his presence feels non-negotiable when he is fit. Spurs don’t seem to have a viable alternative profile.
But being essential and being effective are two very different things.
Whether it’s rust after his latest setbacks or a deeper issue with how Spurs are using him, Solanke offered nowhere near enough as the focal point. Nineteen touches all game. The centre-forward, in a side chasing a first league win, seeing less of the ball than Kinsky in goal.
That statistic cuts through everything else. All the possession, all the pretty combinations, and the man in the middle is barely involved.
Tottenham have spent heavily to reshape this squad. They’ve stocked it with creators, ball-players, system pieces. Yet the most basic question remains unanswered: who actually puts the ball in the net?
Until they solve that, the numbers will keep piling up in the wrong column, and De Zerbi’s football will stay stuck in theory rather than turning into results.
