Twelve goals conceded in five Premier League games have left Chelsea with the Premier League’s worst defensive record. Is Xabi Alonso’s system being exposed, are key absences destabilizing the side, or are too many players simply making costly mistakes?
There is a clear contradiction at the heart of Chelsea’s start to the Premier League season. Xabi Alonso arrived at Stamford Bridge with a reputation for structure, control, and sophisticated positional football. His Chelsea side have already shown flashes of the attacking ambition expected of one of Europe’s most highly regarded young coaches. Yet defensively, they have looked anything but controlled.
After five Premier League matches, Chelsea have conceded 12 goals and are still waiting for their first league clean sheet of the season. The 3–0 defeat at Brentford was merely the latest and most damaging example in what is appearing to be an endless list. It also extended Chelsea’s sequence without a Premier League clean sheet to more than 20 matches. The immediate temptation is to look at Alonso.
Chelsea are playing a new system under a new manager. Their defensive line can be aggressive, their wing-backs advance high up the pitch placing significant responsibility on the midfield to protect the spaces created when possession is lost. But that explanation alone is too convenient. Alonso did not build a defensively reckless team at Bayer Leverkusen. Quite the opposite. His unbeaten Bundesliga champions of 2023–24 conceded just 24 goals in 34 league matches, a club record and an average of approximately 0.7 per game. Neither did his early work at Real Madrid suggest a coach unconcerned by defensive control. Under Alonso, Madrid initially reduced the number of counter-attacks they faced from 1.47 per match the previous season to 0.83, while pressing more aggressively and winning possession higher up the pitch. How then has a coach noted for control inherited a Chelsea side that currently looks so vulnerable? The answer is probably less satisfying than blaming one man or one tactical idea. Chelsea’s defensive problems appear to be a combination of missing personnel, an unfinished tactical structure, and repeated individual errors.
Caicedo’s Absence is Not Simply About Losing a Midfielder
The significance of Moises Caicedo is perhaps clearest when he is not playing. Caicedo has yet to have a premier league start barring the 22 minutes he had as a substitute in the 4:3 win over Brighton due to injury. His absence was particularly conspicuous in the Brentford defeat, when Jordan Henderson started in midfield in his place alongside valentin Barco. To describe Caicedo merely as Chelsea’s defensive midfielder understates his importance.
In Alonso’s system, the player at the base of midfield is one of the central components of the team’s ‘Rest Defence’ — the structure left behind the ball while Chelsea attack. When the wing-backs push forward and Chelsea commit numbers around the opposition penalty area, somebody must protect against the first pass of a counter-attack. Caicedo is exceptionally suited to that task.
He anticipates danger, covers ground quickly, wins second balls, and can defend both centrally and towards the touchline. Perhaps most importantly, his positioning allows defenders behind him to remain compact rather than being dragged forward into midfield.
A simplified version looks something like this:
When Chelsea loses possession, Caicedo can occupy the area opponents would ideally use to launch the counter. He does not necessarily have to win the ball. Sometimes his value is simply forcing an opponent sideways, slowing the transition by two or three seconds and allowing Chelsea’s wing-backs and attacking midfielders to recover.
Without that protection, Chelsea can instead resemble this:
Those few meters matter enormously. A center-back who should be concentrating on the striker can suddenly be forced forward to confront a midfielder running at him. The outside center-back then moves across; thus, the opposite side becomes vulnerable. One missing player can therefore alter the responsibilities of four or five others.
That does not mean Caicedo’s return will automatically repair Chelsea. But it helps explain why a team trying to play aggressively without one of its best transition defenders can suddenly look significantly less secure.
Palestra May Be the Less Obvious Missing Piece
If Caicedo’s absence was always likely to attract attention, Marco Palestra’s importance would be easier to overlook.
The Italian had barely begun his competitive Chelsea career before injury intervened, but his pre-season form offered important clues about Alonso’s plans. Palestra impressed repeatedly during the summer and was used on both sides of the pitch. After Chelsea’s 3–0 pre-season victory against AC Milan, Alonso praised his impact, hunger, adaptability, and ability to perform in different positions. Chelsea’s manager said the youngster was getting “better and better” with every game. His profile is particularly relevant. Alonso’s wing-backs are not traditional full-backs. They are expected to provide attacking width, arrive high in possession, participate in the press, and still possess enough athleticism to recover when the ball is lost. That creates a demanding tactical equation. If the wing-back stays too deep, Chelsea can lack width. If he goes forward but cannot recover quickly enough, Chelsea leaves the channel behind him exposed. Palestra looked capable of performing both jobs. Consider the responsibility placed on the right wing-back:
If possession is lost, the chain must reverse almost immediately:
One delayed recovery can create a domino effect; The right center-back gets dragged towards the touchline. The central defender moves across. Suddenly the far side of the penalty area is available for a late runner.
A late recovery run from Morgan Rogers almost leads to a goal
This is why Palestra’s absence matters beyond the loss of one promising young player. Chelsea is missing somebody who appeared unusually well suited to one of Alonso’s most specialized roles.
But injuries alone cannot explain 12 Goals
There is an obvious danger here; once important players are injured, almost every poor performance can be explained through their absence. Chelsea cannot allow that to happen. They have conceded at least twice in each of Alonso’s first five Premier League matches. Hull City scored twice at Stamford Bridge, Arsenal scored twice, and Brentford scored three. Even Chelsea’s victories contained defensive warning signs. That is too consistent a pattern to attribute solely to Caicedo and Palestra. The more uncomfortable question is whether Chelsea currently understands Alonso’s defensive system well enough to execute it.
The Problem with Alonso’s Football When One Player Arrives Late
Alonso’s football is highly dependent on relationships between players. A wing-back can attack because a midfielder moves across. A center-back can step forward because another defender covers behind him. The front line can press aggressively because the midfield squeezes upwards at exactly the same moment. When those actions are synchronized, the pitch becomes small. When they are not, the pitch becomes enormous; that may explain some of Chelsea’s current difficulties.
Imagine Chelsea initiating a high press:
A high press where distance between attack and midfield is tight
The above scenario is manageable; the attacking and midfield lines move together. The opponent has limited time and limited space.
Now consider what happens if Chelsea’s forwards press but the midfield hesitates, as shown below:
At that point Chelsea has a problem. The press has effectively removed their own forwards from the defensive phase while giving the opposition midfielder time to turn. The center backs then face a difficult decision. Step forward and risk space behind, stay deep, and allow the ball-carrier to advance. Neither option is particularly attractive.
This is where judging defenders purely on the final moment of an attack can become misleading. A center-back may appear responsible for allowing an attacker into the penalty area, but the tactical breakdown may have occurred several seconds earlier when Chelsea’s first and second defensive lines became disconnected. That is fundamentally a coaching issue, and it is an area Alonso must fix. This is what makes his Leverkusen record especially interesting. The strongest argument against the suggestion that Chelsea’s current defensive chaos is simply an inevitable consequence of Alonso’s philosophy is Bayer Leverkusen.
His 2023–24 side did not win the Bundesliga unbeaten by accepting defensive vulnerability in exchange for attacking freedom. They defended exceptionally well. Leverkusen conceded only 24 goals across 34 league matches—their best defensive record in a Bundesliga season. Their back three were protected by excellent spacing ahead of them. Granit Xhaka particularly brought positional intelligence. Exequiel Palacios offered mobility while Jeremie Frimpong and Alejandro Grimaldo pushed extremely high from wing-back, yet the defenders behind them were rarely left completely abandoned. The important concept was not the formation; it was the rest defense. When Leverkusen attacked, Alonso wanted enough players behind or around the ball to deal with a turnover immediately.
A simplified version looked like this:
The aggressive positions of the wing-backs appear risky, but the central structure underneath them gives the system its security. Chelsea currently appears to possess the attacking ambition of that system without consistently reproducing its defensive insurance. That distinction is crucial.
Real Madrid provides another clue. Alonso’s brief Real Madrid tenure also undermines the idea that his football is naturally vulnerable to counter-attacks. Early in the 2025–26 campaign, Madrid were allowing only 0.83 counter-attacks per game, compared with 1.47 the previous season. Their PPDA—a measure often used to indicate pressing intensity—fell from 12.1 to 10.8, suggesting Alonso was asking Madrid to engage opponents more aggressively. They were also winning possession significantly more often near the opposition goal. The tactical principle was revealing. Alonso wanted Madrid to defend with the ball. Rather than attack as quickly as possible every time possession was recovered, an additional pass could allow the defensive structure behind the attack to settle.
The opponent might then have fewer opportunities to counter. Chelsea have not consistently reached that stage. Their matches frequently become stretched. And once stretched, a young and still-developing defensive unit is being asked to defend situations that Alonso’s system is designed to prevent in the first place.
Then Come the Individual Mistakes
There is another side to Chelsea’s defensive problems that tactical diagrams cannot fully explain. Sometimes a defender simply has to defend. Hull’s 2–2 draw at Stamford Bridge included an error from Jorrel Hato that contributed to Chelsea conceding. Against Brentford, Chelsea were repeatedly punished by basic failures to win first contacts, track runners, and defend the far post.
Most significantly, Chelsea have already conceded four goals from set pieces in five Premier League games. Since the beginning of last season, they have conceded 23 goals from set-piece situations, joint-worst among Premier League clubs over that period. That cannot simply be blamed on Alonso’s open-play tactics. A corner removes most of the debate about ‘Rest Defence’. There is no midfield transition to blame. The players know where the ball is coming from. They know which opponents they are supposed to track, and yet Chelsea continue to concede. Brentford even acknowledged that they deliberately targeted space at Chelsea’s back post after identifying the weakness. That raises questions about concentration, communication, and physical competitiveness. Levi Colwill admitted after the Brentford defeat that Chelsea had been “bullied” at times. That is not language associated with tactical complexity. It is about duels.
Structure Versus Execution Is the Wrong Debate
Football analysis often attempts to separate goals into neat categories. Managerial error, individual error, and system failure; in reality, they overlap.
Consider a common Chelsea transition.
- Wing-back attacks ↓
- Chelsea loses possession ↓
- Midfielder fails to stop counter ↓
- The center-back must defend wider area ↓
- Defender mistimes challenge ↓
- Goal: Who is responsible?
The manager for committing the wingback? The midfielder for allowing the pass? Or the defender for losing the duel? Potentially all three.
That is probably the most useful way of understanding Chelsea’s defensive start. The structure is allowing too many difficult situations to develop, and individual players are then failing to solve enough of those situations. Fixing only one part may therefore be insufficient.
Chelsea are also losing control after setbacks; another worrying feature of Chelsea’s early season has been their response to conceding. The Brentford game was particularly revealing. Chelsea were relatively competitive before the opening goal. Afterwards, their defensive structure deteriorated, and Brentford scored twice more. Alonso subsequently questioned his players’ ability to maintain their level and competitive focus throughout a full match. That points towards a different sort of defensive weakness: game management.
The best possession teams understand that conceding does not require an immediate emotional response. Sometimes the correct reaction is five minutes of safe possession. Recycle the ball. Slow the tempo. Re-establish territory, and force the opposition backwards again. Chelsea currently have a tendency for matches to become even more open once they fall behind. As more players advance, distances increase. The urgency to equalize creates another transition; then another. A 1–0 deficit becomes 2–0. At Brentford it eventually became three.
Alonso therefore faces a psychological challenge as well as a tactical one. So is Alonso responsible? Partly. That is the unavoidable conclusion. A coach cannot be given credit when a structure works and absolved whenever it fails. Chelsea’s spacing is sometimes poor. Their press can become disconnected. Their defensive transitions are too easy to play through, and the team is yet to establish the collective automatisms associated with Alonso’s best Leverkusen side. Those issues belong on the training ground.
But there is an equally important distinction between saying Alonso has tactical problems to solve and saying Alonso’s tactics are the fundamental problem. His previous teams provide little support for the latter argument.
Leverkusen were defensively excellent. His early Madrid side reduced counter-attacking opportunities rather than increasing them. The philosophy itself can produce control; Chelsea simply are not producing enough of it yet.
The return of Caicedo could tell us much more; that is why the next phase of Chelsea’s season should be illuminating. Caicedo’s eventual return would restore arguably the squad’s most important transition defender. Palestra would give Alonso another natural option in a demanding wing-back role that appeared tailored to his qualities during pre-season. If their presence makes Chelsea dramatically more compact, the first five games may ultimately be viewed as the difficult installation phase of a new system deprived of two important components. The manager is still trying to create the compact distances and collective pressing that characterized his Leverkusen side. And when Chelsea’s structure has broken down, individual players have too often compounded the problem with poor decisions.
But Alonso’s history provides Chelsea with at least one reason for patience. A coach whose Leverkusen side conceded only 24 goals across an entire unbeaten Bundesliga campaign has already demonstrated that he can construct an elite defensive structure. The question at Stamford Bridge is whether he can build one again—with different players, in a different league, and under considerably greater scrutiny.
For now, Chelsea’s defense does not look fundamentally doomed.
It looks unfinished.
And the Premier League is an unforgiving place to finish building it.