EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsIf Chelsea keep it up, they're headed for a successful season.Through new manager Xabi Alonso's first three matches, they have the fourth-most points in the Premier League -- only behind the trio of preseason title favorites: Arsenal, Manchester City, and, uh, Hull City.They're tied for the league lead in goals. With two wins from three, they're also on pace for a 76-point haul -- good enough for third or fourth place in each of the last three seasons.And they've done it against one of the trickier schedules in the league, starting away to Fulham, then hosting upstarts Brighton, and most recently losing away to Arsenal in what is the toughest fixture they'll face all year. Per Opta's power rankings, only Coventry City have faced a harder slate of opponents.Chelsea spent a lot of money this summer to acquire Morgan Rogers, and he looks fantastic. Cole Palmer, too, seems like he might be back to his best. And Jo�o Pedro seems like he's officially become one of the best strikers in the world. That front three has been electric.Given that Chelsea finished 10th last season and cycled through three different managers, it appears that Alonso has them headed toward competence. After a chaotic half-decade of upheaval under new owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital, Chelsea seem like they're one of the few Premier League clubs on an upward trajectory.That is all true -- unless you've actually watched their games. Although they've scored lots of goals and ripped off some respectable results, Chelsea's first three matches have been absolutely out of control.Why we've never seen a team like Xabi Alonso's ChelseaThrough three matches, Chelsea have been one of the best attacking teams in the Premier League.They've scored eight goals (tied for first), created 5.56 non-penalty expected goals (fifth), attempted 48 shots (sixth), and generated 93 touches inside the penalty area (seventh).The numbers are even better than they look, because one-third of their match time came on the road against one of the best defensive teams we've ever seen. Arsenal have conceded a total of 0.93 expected goals through three matches -- only one team (Manchester City) has conceded fewer xG ... per game.Put another way: Liverpool have played one of the easiest schedules in the league, they've built a team out of players whose best skills are "attacking," and they've generated fewer xG and penalty area touches than Chelsea have thus far.So, what's the big deal? It's just that we've never seen a team do it like this -- quite literally.Through three games, Chelsea have 36.3% of the possession in their matches -- second-fewest in the league. Even if we adjust that for more meaningful possession -- only looking at possession in the attacking third, what we'll call "field tilt" -- then Alonso's team only rises up to 17th out of 20. That's a massive outlier, in all sorts of ways.We'll start with this season. Here's a plot of the non-penalty xG generated by each team, compared with their field tilt:Of course, possession doesn't mean anything beyond "you have possession of the ball." More possession does not automatically equal "more goals" or "better team." But the best teams in the world are almost always teams that create lots of chances for themselves and suppress chances for their opponents.And the way almost everyone has done that is by tilting the field. Keeping the ball in the attacking third means you have more opportunities to create chances, and it also means your opponent doesn't have the ball in the area of the field where they can create chances for themselves.Since the 2009-10 season, there have been 58 Premier League teams who have generated a field tilt of less than 40% over their first three games of the season. Chelsea rank first in xG, shots, and penalty area touches.In fact, only five teams have generated even 4.0 xG from a sub-40% field title over the opening trio of matches. This is the list, along with where they finished in the table:Brentford, 2024-25: 10thBrentford, 2023-24: 16thWest Ham, 2023-24: 9thTottenham, 2022-23: 8thLeicester City, 2017-18: 9thOver a full season, no Premier League team since 2009-10 has finished the season with a field tilt below 40% and a positive goal differential. The best is Newcastle's minus-1 mark in 2018-19. The most points from a team below the control threshold is Swansea City's 56 in 2014-15. They finished eighth -- 56 points would've landed in seventh last year.Given that Alonso has never coached in England before, perhaps there'd be rosier findings elsewhere on the continent? Nope. If we expand the search across Europe's Big Five top leagues, then Espanyol in 2016-17 match Swansea as the high points total, while Koln recorded the best goal differential of a sub-40-field-tilt team with their plus-10 mark in 2015-16.Teams that play like Chelsea have played over their first three games always banged up against a ceiling since the start of the previous decade. Ceding or failing to control the field has never resulted in anything better than an upper-midtable finish.Can Chelsea keep winning without controlling the ball?There are, of course, some mitigating factors allowing Chelsea to do this.Chelsea have led for 195 of the minutes they've played so far this season. That's the 10th-longest stretch over the first three matches of the season since 2009-10. Teams tend to play a little less aggressively once they take a lead, and Chelsea have scored in the first, fourth, and second minute of their three opening games.But Chelsea's total lack of control is still an outlier among the early-season early-scorers. Nineteen different teams have led for at least 180 minutes over their first three matches since 2009, and that previously mentioned Swansea City side are the only other one with a field tilt below 40%. The average among those teams is 56.5%.The five Champions League qualifiers from the Premier League last season averaged 3.6 matches with a sub-40% field tilt. And the top two, Arsenal and Man City, each produced two across the whole season. Chelsea have three ... from their first three games of the season. And although a game against Arsenal will skew anyone's numbers, the skews were even more extreme before Chelsea played Arsenal.To make things even stranger, this is the exact opposite of what we've seen from Alonso's previous teams.Across his two full seasons coaching Bayer Leverkusen and his half-year with Real Madrid, 65% was the lowest field tilt any of his teams produced. And when those sides were winning, that number dropped to 60%.The Bundesliga, as a whole, eschews any idea of control, and Alonso's Leverkusen stood out for how much control they wanted. Although Real Madrid always have lots of the ball in LaLiga because they have so much talent, Alonso's Madrid had more control than any Madrid side we've seen in a long time. If anything, Alonso's desire for control -- and what it required from superstars like Kylian Mbapp and Vincius Jnior -- is what led to his demise.Perhaps Alonso doesn't want a repeat of what happened in Madrid. Had he tailored his approach to his three star attackers -- Mbappe, Vini, and Jude Bellingham -- the way he has with Chelsea, then he'd probably still be sitting on the sideline in Spain.Exerting control nowadays requires organized and aggressive pressing from your attackers to win the ball back after you lose it. His Madrid players refused to do it. And now, Chelsea have been the least aggressive pressing team in the Premier League through the first three matches. They're allowing a league-high 18.89 passes per defensive action (PPDA), while the league average is 12.20.But the dialed-back press hasn't made Chelsea particularly hard to break down, either. They've conceded the fifth-most shots in the league, the 11th-most xG, and the second-most touches inside of the penalty area.Perhaps the solution to all of this is the currently injured Moiss Caicedo. He's only played 14 minutes so far this season, and dropping one of the best defensive midfielders in the world into this system will obviously help. Not only should he give Chelsea a little more control, but he should be able to break up more of the opposition possessions before they reach the penalty area.If that's true, though, then the club have given themselves a very narrow path to success with the summer departures of Enzo Fernndez to Manchester City and Andrey Santos to Manchester United. Beyond Caicedo, these are Chelsea's midfield options: Romeo Lavia, who has played 1,400 minutes for Chelsea over the last three seasons. Reece James, who has played fullback for most of his career and has broken the 2,000-minute in the Premier League once (six years ago). Jordan Henderson, who is 36 years old. Malo Gusto has also played midfield minutes, but only about 300 of his 13,000 minutes as a pro have come in the middle. He is, by almost any definition, a fullback.Maybe the most interesting question for the rest of the Premier League season, then, is what comes next for Chelsea. Are they, really, going to keep playing like this? And if they don't, then why'd they do it in the first place?But if Chelsea do evolve to take more control of their matches, then maybe the second-most interesting question for the rest of the Premier League season is: how will they do it?Chelsea's best players are their attackers, and not having the ball and allowing them to run into space is getting the best out of all three of them. Plus, beyond Caicedo, Chelsea really do not have the kind of midfielders you can rely on to pin the opposition back and suffocate them with passing and pressing.Can Alonso figure out how to maintain the attacking firepower without the defense getting buried under an avalanche of chances? That's yet another question -- because, after three games, there are a lot more of them than there were before the season started.
