Alonso Explains Plan to Blend Rogers and Palmer Before Fulham Opener

Xabi Alonso has spent his first weeks at Chelsea answering the same question in different forms: how does a club-record £117m forward built for Unai Emery’s direct Aston Villa attack fit inside a manager who wants control of the ball above almost everything else? Two days before Morgan Rogers could make his competitive debut at Fulham, Alonso gave his clearest answer yet, and it was not the tactical straitjacket some expected.

“When we need to have good control, I think Morgan can do it. Our game is whatever it takes. So when we have to do transition, we will do transition,” Alonso told Sky Sports. “All the rest of the players, they need to understand what it takes because this is to be competitive.”

Rogers Arrives With Questions to Answer

Rogers became the most expensive British player of all time when he joined Chelsea from Aston Villa straight after his World Cup exploits, where he helped England reach the semi-finals and finish third in the tournament. He scored on his debut in Chelsea’s 3-1 win over Real Sociedad the following weekend, but the bigger question hanging over his move has always been stylistic rather than about raw ability. Villa under Emery leaned on a more direct approach built around transitions, and Chelsea under Alonso have built their identity on patient possession. Pundits and supporters alike have wondered aloud whether the two versions of Rogers can coexist.

Rogers has not hidden from the noise around his price tag. “I’m just so excited,” he told Sky Sports. “It was just an unbelievable summer. It’s probably the one summer where I didn’t mind that it was a short one. I love my rest, I love my time with my family but at the same time it was one where I was watching the pre-season games, itching to just get back in.” He described the mood inside the building in similar terms: “I feel the excitement walking in every day. I feel the anticipation of not knowing where it can go. It can be good, it can be bad, but I feel a positive energy and a vibe. A fresh manager, a fresh change of environment, new players added and stuff – I feel that everyone’s excited to see where it can go and where we can take it.”

Alonso’s own answer was to reframe the fit question entirely. Rather than asking Rogers to abandon what made him a £117m player, the Chelsea boss wants a squad capable of switching registers within the same ninety minutes. “You have a plan, you have an idea, you have a style, but sometimes the game demands something different,” he said. “Are you able to adapt to that and to be competitive in that momentum as well? If we are able to understand that and to do that, we will win more games.”

That flexibility, Alonso explained, is baked into how Chelsea now prepare rather than treated as an exception. “We tend to, more than in one specific picture, to have principles when we are moving around the pitch. And those can be in one formation or a different formation. We have players who have enough flexibility to play in different ones. So that gives us possibilities to prepare with our own identity.”

The Palmer Partnership

Rogers’ relationship with Cole Palmer has drawn just as much attention, and it goes back a long way. The pair met as teenagers at Manchester City, where Rogers arrived from West Brom and played alongside Palmer at youth level before their paths crossed again with England. Their near-identical goal celebration has become a running joke among fans of both players, and questions were raised about whether two players with overlapping strengths could function in the same forward line.

Rogers rejects the idea that they overlap at all. “We have completely different qualities. He’s more of a passer, a linker, a combiner. He’s like an artist in the way he moves with the ball and plays with it,” he said. “I’m more direct, more straight line and more physical. We’re completely different and that offsets really well. I’ve known his game, he’s known my game since we were what, 14? We’ve played with each other at England and stuff like that, so we know exactly how to play with each other and to get the best out of each other.” He added that their friendship off the pitch feeds directly into how they play: “Playing with one of your closest friends always helps bring the best out of each other in a competitive way of wanting to kind of outdo each other. But there has to be a line of the team comes first, and winning comes first, and that’s always been our biggest thing.”

Palmer arrives at this season having found life harder over the past two campaigns following a stunning first year in west London, and working out how to get the best from him sits high on Alonso’s list. “Different players need different connections and Cole, for sure, he’s very analytical,” Alonso said. “I think that he’s smart. You need to give him his space to connect, but I’m really enjoying it because he’s top-talented and with little, he understands a lot so it’s been very interesting.”

The description is telling. Where Rogers is being asked to adapt his game across multiple systems, Palmer is being given room to operate largely on his own terms, a distinction that says as much about Alonso’s read of his two most talked-about attackers as any formation he settles on. Rogers, for his part, says he wants the scrutiny that comes with his price tag rather than shrink from it. “This is what I live for. These are the conversations I want to be in,” he said. “I want to be the topic of discussion when talking about games I’m involved in or England selections. I want to be in those conversations – sometimes on the good end of it, sometimes on the bad end of it – but if I’m in those conversations I’m doing something right.”

A Formation Still Taking Shape

Alonso’s history with a back three has been one of the bigger pre-season talking points around Stamford Bridge. He ran a three-man defence to an unbeaten domestic season at Bayer Leverkusen in 2023/24, dropped the approach at Real Madrid, and has drifted back to it in the final weeks of preparation for his first season in England. He was careful not to commit to it as a fixed plan. “Lots of teams play three at the back in certain parts of the game. You see each team has to be so sophisticated to prepare for each game and know what they’re going to do because each team, they prepare so well,” he said, treating the system as one tool among several rather than a philosophy to defend.

Chasing the Team’s Spirit

What Alonso returned to again and again was not shape or personnel but something harder to coach. “Above the football qualities, above the tactics, for me it’s the soul of the team, the team spirit. We are able to connect, to have this good energy that we share,” he said.

He was clear that building it takes time rather than a single team meeting or pre-season friendly. “This is a process, it’s not one day you create that, but we start feeling it and we start enjoying it. That will be for me the strongest force and strength of this team,” he said. “When you focus on one thing, you tend to improve those things. When you don’t focus that much, maybe those things are not important. But for me, this is very important. This is a process, it takes time, but I’m sure that what we started will get better with the games.”

It is a deliberate contrast to the noise that has followed Chelsea for much of the summer, from Rogers’ fee to the ongoing uncertainty over Enzo Fernandez’s future, who Alonso says is training well at the club even as he continues to be linked with a move away. Rather than address every individual storyline, the new manager keeps steering the conversation back to a collective idea that cannot be measured by a formation or a transfer fee. Rogers, at least, sounds like a player who has already bought into it. “Chelsea is a club that wants to win things. It’s a club that I’ve always grown up watching win titles, win Champions Leagues and I want to be in teams that do that as well,” he said, name-checking Eden Hazard, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard as the players he watched growing up. “There’s a lot of players in that room that have the aspirations to do the same thing, so it’s exciting where we can take it. It’s about knuckling down now and proving people wrong who probably had a negative outlook on Chelsea in the last couple of years.”

What Comes Next

Chelsea open their Premier League season at Fulham on Monday Night Football, with build-up from 6.30pm and kick-off at 8pm. It will be Alonso’s first competitive fixture in charge and, if selected, Rogers’ first taste of a west London derby with his transfer fee following him onto the pitch.

None of what Alonso described amounts to a finished product. He has not settled on a formation, he is still learning how Rogers and Palmer read the game around each other, and he readily admits the identity he wants Chelsea to have is a work in progress rather than something switched on for the opening weekend. But the approach he outlined was of a manager comfortable letting his squad’s habits change from game to game, provided the underlying connection between the players holds. Craven Cottage will be the first real examination of whether that connection exists.