Xabi Alonso's Chelsea: A Premier League Top-Four Verdict After a Winless September

LONDON — Five games into the Xabi Alonso era, Chelsea are the most entertaining mid-table team in England. That is not a compliment. Tenth place, seven points, ten goals scored and twelve conceded: the Blues can score against anyone and, right now, so can everyone else. Saturday's visit of Bournemouth to Stamford Bridge is not just the first game after the international break — it's the first exam of a season that is quietly drifting.

Let's be fair about the context first. Alonso arrived in the close season tasked with fixing last term's 10th-place finish, and the opening weeks were genuinely promising. Chelsea beat Fulham and Brighton & Hove Albion to start the campaign, and at that point the new-manager bounce looked real. Then September happened: a 2-1 defeat at champions Arsenal on September 5, a 2-2 home draw with Hull on September 12, and a 3-0 defeat at Brentford going into the break. No league win in September. The bounce is officially over.

The Arsenal game, at least, was respectable. Morgan Rogers gave Chelsea the lead after just two minutes at the Emirates — dream start — before former Blue Kai Havertz levelled and Martin Odegaard won it for the champions. You can lose 2-1 away to the title holders and hold your head up. The Hull game was different: Rogers again put Chelsea ahead in the seventh minute at the Bridge, only for Mohamed Belloumi to equalise from an uncleared long ball and then put the visitors in front with a deflected shot before half-time. Cole Palmer's 66th-minute cut-back for João Pedro salvaged a point, but a 2-2 home draw against a promoted side is two points dropped, plain and simple. Nine goals conceded in the first four league games told the whole story.

And here's the thing about this Chelsea side: the attack is not the problem. Ten goals in the first four league games is top-half output, Rogers has been a revelation, João Pedro has made an immediate impact, and Palmer remains the creative heartbeat. The 6-3 League Cup win over Leeds in midweek — chaotic, breathless, ridiculous — was this team in miniature: capable of scoring for fun, constitutionally incapable of sitting on a lead. Fun to watch. Agonising to support. Impossible, at this rate, to build a season on.

Alonso knows it. After the Hull draw he admitted he would love Chelsea to give him a "boring game": "Maybe entertaining, but I hope one day you'll say it was a boring game and we win and we don't give these entertaining moments," he said. "When we get the lead, you still need to be competing and not give the chance so easily for them to come back... It was too soft." Too soft is the phrase that should worry everyone at the Bridge. This isn't a team being outplayed — it's a team switching off.

The squad situation doesn't help. Enzo Fernández left for Manchester City on deadline day for £125m — a British-record-equalling fee that stripped the midfield of its metronome. The planned replacement, Monaco's Lamine Camara, saw his £47m move collapse in the dying moments of the window. Moisés Caicedo had played just 14 minutes all season before the break. No wonder Chelsea are short of established central options — no wonder the team looks so open through the middle. It's telling that the club have been linked with Bournemouth's Alex Scott, the England midfielder they face on Saturday.

So is this a top-four side? Let's do the maths honestly. Chelsea are 10th on seven points. The teams currently occupying the Champions League places — City, Arsenal, Brighton and Brentford — are all unbeaten or better, and Brighton are scoring for fun. Chelsea's goal difference is minus two. The top four is built on clean sheets and game management, and right now Chelsea can't manage a lead for 45 minutes. The talent is there — nobody doubts that — but top-four teams don't concede twelve in five. They don't go a winless September. They don't need "boring" to be an aspiration.

October is where the verdict gets rendered. After Bournemouth, Chelsea go to Everton on October 17, host Tottenham on October 24, travel to Liverpool in the Carabao Cup fourth round on October 28, and host Manchester United on October 31. That is a month that can rescue a season or bury it. Bournemouth, one of three sides yet to win in the league this term, are the must-win — anything less than three points at the Bridge on Saturday and the questions stop being about the top four and start being about something much worse.

The honest answer, then: not yet. This is a team with top-four attacking talent and bottom-half defensive habits, and until Alonso fixes the second part — until someone at Stamford Bridge learns to enjoy a boring 1-0 — tenth is about right. The good news for Chelsea fans? The fix is obvious, the manager sees it, and October is full of winnable games. The bad news? They've known the fix since September 12, and nothing has changed yet.