The Premier League returns this weekend for the start of the 2026-27 campaign. Before it begins, we look at some of the key issues facing Chelsea and their new manager Xabi Alonso.
Can Xabi Alonso Tame Chelsea’s Wild Side?
Mauricio Pochettino, Enzo Maresca and Liam Rosenior all failed to correct Chelsea’s disciplinary issues, so what hope is there for Xabi Alonso?
Since Pochettino’s arrival in July 2023, Chelsea have been given the most yellow cards (294) and red cards (14) in the Premier League across three seasons. In fact, Chelsea hold three of the top eight tallies for most cards received in any Premier League season, all of them coming since 2023-24, with that campaign under Pochettino (105 yellows, 4 reds) the highest of all.
Can Alonso tame Chelsea’s wild side and prevent their recklessness from damaging their hopes? His time at Real Madrid last season doesn’t provide much hope: across 28 competitive games last season, his side were given six red cards – only Real Oviedo (8) were given more between August and his sacking in mid-January.
Much of Alonso’s failure at Madrid stemmed from his inability to control the egos of multiple players. There are some strong characters and personalities at Chelsea too, with expectation levels maybe not as high as they come at Madrid but still adding pressure from the off.
It’s difficult to explicitly tie inexperience to a lack of discipline, but there are possible links between Chelsea being the youngest team in the Premier League over the last three seasons, but they’ve made steps to change that this summer…
Will Adding More Experience Help Chelsea?
Chelsea had the youngest average starting XI age in the Premier League last season, at just 24 years and 194 days old. That was also the case in 2024-25 (24 years, 36 days) and 2023-24 (24 years, 232 days).
There was a serious lack of experience on their bench too, with the average age of Chelsea’s named substitutes last season being just 22 years, 83 days old – over a year and a half younger than any other team.
Since the Clearlake investment group bought a majority stake in the club at the end of 2021-22, their policy has been to recruit young players on long-term contracts, but back in April owner Behdad Eghbali hinted at potentially tweaking their model and adding some more experience to their core of young players.
The recruitment of 35-year-old Cole Palmer pulled the strings in a brilliant 3-0 win over PSG in the final, everyone was excited about the potential heights the Englishman could reach in 2025-26.
He scored three times and assisted twice more in six games in the CWC, but struggled to replicate his best form over the following campaign.
Palmer has been involved in just 14 goals in 34 competitive appearances for Chelsea in the last 12 months. Take penalties away, and he’s not even reached double figures (9). Before his goal on the final day of the Premier League season versus Sunderland, Palmer had gone 12 successive appearances without scoring or assisting in all competitions for Chelsea – his worst run at the club.
Those stats were one of the main reasons behind his exclusion from Thomas Tuchel’s England squad for the World Cup, which was an unthinkable situation a year earlier following Palmer’s 18 goals and 13 assists for Chelsea in 2024-25, including the Club World Cup.
Palmer will hope that Alonso can spark his career back into life. The Spaniard worked wonders for another number 10 during his two and a half years at Bayer Leverkusen, elevating Florian Wirtz to another level. In that time, only Harry Kane (84) was involved in more non-penalty goals for a Bundesliga club than Wirtz (74), with the German assisting more goals (41) and creating more chances from open play (249) than any other Bundesliga player across all competitions.
Can João Pedro Reach New Heights?
Despite Chelsea’s poor season last time out,
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