Another two goals were conceded over the weekend, bringing Chelsea’s season total to nine, fourth most in the league behind only Ipswich Town, Crystal Palace, and bottom of the table Coventry City. Thankfully, we do have the second highest scoring attack in the league, so we do have seven points to show for our efforts as well, but conceding over two per game is hardly sustainable over the course of the entire season. (And so is, similarly, having to score over two goals per game.)
Now, obviously,
attack is the strength of this team — especially with João Pedro, Cole Palmer, and Morgan Rogers working together so excellently — so playing to that strength is a solid approach. But a bit of balance certainly wouldn’t hurt. And we’re hardly alone in looking for that.
“Overall, I think that we are attacking better than defending in every part. We know that it’s a big topic and a big theme for us. For sure it’s just four games, but the dynamic in terms of conceding, I don’t like it and we need to do much better. Open play, set-pieces, long balls, this toughness, this competitive sense, we can do better.”
So that’s pretty comprehensive, which is likely to prevent an easy solution. It’s not just one thing, it’s many things. Alonso and his staff have their work cut out for themselves.
“It’s all maybe entertaining [but] for sure it kind of repeats some patterns that we are making. It will take time to or it will take moments to fix them. [We] address and we will get better, but it’s having an impact on our performances at the moment.
“[We] can do better, we can do better for sure. We need to know that even when we have the lead, a very important part of the game is to hold together, to keep the distances, to go intense in the situations to defend. I’m sure that we can do better. […] Any team in the Premier League can hurt you [and] you need to be very aware, very ready that the danger can come from any situation. If you are soft or if you are not prepared, you will get punished and we have been punished that way.”
-Xabi Alonso; source: Football.London
It’s still early, and four games is ultimately a small sample size (even six games, if we include the League Cup games), but Alonso will definitely have to get this figured out if he wants to have a successful season.
