Chelsea's Defensive Woes: Can Alonso Fix It?
Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea are already a problem going one way. Nobody has worked out how to stop them scoring. JP Morgan and the rest of that attacking cast guarantee at least a goal a game, a streak that survived another wild afternoon in the 2-2 draw with Hull at Stamford Bridge.
You can’t, though, attack your way out of every crisis. Not when your back line keeps dragging you back into trouble.
This was the 20th consecutive Premier League match in which Chelsea failed to keep a clean sheet. Twenty. For a club that once built its identity on defensive arrogance, that number lands like a warning siren.
Emi Martinez was supposed to be part of the fix. A World Cup winner. Multiple Yashin Trophy winner. A goalkeeper signed to bring authority and calm. But if the players in front of him switch off, misjudge simple situations and lose duels they should win, he might as well be Robert Sanchez. Even a world-class goalkeeper can only bail you out so many times when the dam in front of him keeps cracking.
Hull’s 1.32 expected goals told the story. They weren’t slicing Chelsea apart with intricate patterns. They were being handed opportunities. Loose marking. Poor clearances. Gaps where there should have been bodies. Chances served up rather than crafted.
The contrast with Chelsea’s front line is stark. The potential there is obvious and genuinely exciting. They move with freedom, combine instinctively, and carry a constant threat. You can see the outline of a side that could overwhelm opponents.
But Alonso knows better than most that the teams who win titles don’t just dazzle. He played under Jose Mourinho at his most ruthless, when clean sheets were treated like currency and defensive detail was an obsession. That is the part of his footballing education he needs to lean on now.
If Chelsea are serious about challenging, about turning this attacking promise into something tangible, they cannot keep living with this level of defensive chaos. At some point, the goals at the other end have to stop counting double.
Callum Bishop
Iraola’s Liverpool stumble when the schedule bites
Anfield bounced on Wednesday night. Andoni Iraola claimed the first Champions League win of his coaching career, beating Atletico Madrid and ticking off an achievement that felt inevitable at some stage this season.
The bigger question always lurked behind it: how would he handle the grind?
At Rayo Vallecano and Bournemouth, Iraola impressed with intensity and structure, but without the extra weight of European football. This season was always going to test how his ideas survive when the games stack up and the legs get heavy.
Fulham provided the first real examination of that. Liverpool drew 0-0 at home, and the performance never really caught fire.
They started slowly. The tempo Iraola demands just wasn’t there, and it rarely appeared. Fulham grew into the game, grew in belief, and by the end were as likely to snatch all three points as the hosts. Their first point of the campaign was fully earned.
On paper, Iraola’s Liverpool remain unbeaten. His own run without defeat stretches back to the first week of January, thanks to that strong finish with Bournemouth. But strip away the numbers and the picture is less flattering: home games against Nottingham Forest and Fulham have produced only two points. For a team with Liverpool’s ambitions, that return is thin.
Iraola didn’t hide behind excuses when asked if fatigue was to blame, but he didn’t ignore it either.
“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, “60-something hours between the games, after a very big game the other day,” was, in his words, the worst so far. And he knows it will happen again, maybe with one extra day, maybe not.
The schedule is not going to relent. The demands at Liverpool certainly won’t. Iraola’s ideas have already energised the club. Now he has to prove they can survive when the legs are heavy and the margins are thin.
The answers will have to come from him.
Adam Bate
Spurs spend big, but the goals are missing
Tottenham’s problem is brutally simple. They don’t score.
You can dress it up with numbers and nuance, but the bare fact is stark: they have not won a league game this season and have gone 400 minutes without finding the net. For a club that has poured millions into reshaping the squad, that is an uncomfortable truth.
The 0-0 draw with Everton underlined it again. Spurs had creativity on the pitch. Plenty of it. Players who can see passes, carry the ball, break lines. But the man tasked with finishing the moves? He drifted through the game like a shadow.
Dominic Solanke’s importance to Roberto De Zerbi’s plan at Tottenham is already obvious. He is the only true number nine available. The one focal point. When he is fit, he almost has to play because the alternatives simply don’t exist in the same mould.
Yet against Everton, he never got close to imposing himself. Whether it was rust after his latest setbacks or a deeper issue with how Spurs are using him, Solanke was a bystander for long spells. Nineteen touches all game. Fewer than Kinsky in goal.
You don’t need complex analytics to read that. Your centre-forward, the player supposed to live in the penalty area and occupy defenders, barely touched the ball.
Spurs have invested heavily in the supporting cast. The patterns, the structure, the aesthetics are all being built. But without a reliable finisher, without a penalty-box presence who turns half-chances into goals, the whole project stalls.
At some point, the numbers on the balance sheet have to show up on the scoreboard.
