Xabi Alonso clearly wanted Liverpool over Chelsea – now we’re seeing the consequences

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that Chelsea were not Xabi Alonso’s first choice when it came to choosing a new club this summer.

The Spanish tactician worked miracles at Bayer Leverkusen a few years ago, but struggled to look the right fit for Real Madrid, while the stars seemed to be aligning for him and his former club Liverpool as Arne Slot’s dire second season left a vacancy at Anfield.

In the end, it didn’t quite work out, with Alonso himself hardly glowing with joy at how things turned out, telling BBC Sport that his arrival at Chelsea instead of Liverpool was about “timings” more than anything else.

This follows ESPN reporting that Alonso had needed assurances over taking the Blues job, while AS made it clear that LFC was his dream destination.

Xabi Alonso and Chelsea already look like the wrong fit

Is there any wonder Alonso didn’t really want this to happen? Just look at the mess he’s found himself in at Chelsea just five league games in.

The west London giants started brightly with wins over Fulham and Brighton in their first two games, albeit conceding a rather alarming five goals in the process.

Chelsea are winless since then and are up to 12 goals conceded in just five matches after last night’s 3-0 defeat at Brentford, officially giving them the worst defence in the top flight.

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It’s unclear if those assurances Alonso apparently asked for have been met by Chelsea, but his introduction of 16-year-old midfielder Mahdi Nicoll-Jazuli could perhaps be taken as a not-so-subtle signal that, no, they have not. It’s an obvious cry-out to give him a better squad to work with, and he’s not wrong.

The problem for Alonso is that he should have realised what he was walking into. For someone who is so clearly a project-driven manager, thriving in that kind of environment at an intelligent, patient, and generally well-run club like Leverkusen, why has he since gone on to accept jobs with club whose models are the very antithesis to that?

Will Xabi Alonso get time at Chelsea?

It’s early days yet, but this is a surprisingly bad start to the season for a Chelsea side that has, once again, invested so much, and even shown a willingness to recruit more proven names like Morgan Rogers and Maxence Lacroix (though let’s not give them too much credit for the madness of the Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck deals).

How much longer can this continue? We know CFC aren’t afraid to pull the trigger at the first sign of trouble, so once again the project-driven Alonso is not going to get anything like the kind of time he really needs to put his own stamp on this squad and implement a very different tactical philosophy.

In truth, given how much it seems like Alonso himself wasn’t sure about this job, maybe it’s for the best for all parties to go their separate ways sooner rather than later, rather than stretching the suffering out for any longer than necessary.