Chelsea went into the international break on the back of a 3-0 defeat against Brentford, with manager Xabi Alonso questioning the team’s “competitive mentality”, among other things.
Three weeks later, in the first game back from the break, it took Chelsea just 64 seconds to showcase our mentality as we jumped out to yet another early lead. It would be 2-0 just minutes later, while another early goal, just 30 seconds into the second half, gave us what looked like a comfortable 3-0 lead.
Comfortable
is something we don’t really do however, and it was at that point that we lost control of the game. Thankfully, as Alonso pointed out in his post-match comments, we only did so for a few minutes.
“Today was a very complete performance. We were in control for most of the parts of the game, so I’m happy with that. We had a good stability in defence as well, just a couple of situations in the first half. And the second one, after conceding the 3-1 for eight minutes to the 4-1, we were not in control but overall happy with the game, with the performance. It’s many positives to take from the future and other ones to keep going.”
Among the many positives, we did have one negative, too, as Reece James was forced to miss out through (a new) injury. Not to sound the alarm, but anything to do with the knee gives me more concern than Alonso seems to be showing
“He felt something but after we did the tests later in the afternoon and he had some little issues on the knee so we need to check how long it will be. We will assess it week by week.”
-Xabi Alonso; source: Football.London
Sounds like we could be without Reecey for a while, which would be most unfortunate indeed — even if it’s not entirely obvious where he fits in the team now that Moisés Caicedo is back and making an impact in midfield alongside Jordan Henderson.
Similar impact will be needed and expected next weekend as we travel north to take on Everton.
