Xabi Alonso disappointed with Chelsea’s ‘competitive mentality’ in Brentford defeat

Xabi Alonso had talked about wanting a "boring" win for Chelsea, and for the first 45 minutes at the Brentford Community Stadium, it looked like we actually might be on our way. While the match was scoreless, we were far less chaotic than usual, winning the possession battle and largely controlling the flow of the game. Good chances were few and far between, for either side, but at the rate things had been going, we weren't going to need too many of them to nick a boring 1-0, or some such.

Unfortunately, the second 45 was a much different story, and not in a good way. Chelsea were "bullied" by the hosts, as Levi Colwill put it, while giving up three second-half goals in familiarly frustrating ways to head into the international break with plenty of questions and even more concerns for the season ahead.

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Alonso was obviously none too pleased by what he saw out there and he didn't mince his words afterwards.

"[We] dropped our consistency, our competitive mentality needed in the second half. We know that the small details can be decisive. We don't have to give advantage in this kind of games. What they do with little, they get a lot, and credit to them. But it's about 95 minutes and we have not been able to keep that level throughout these few games in the start of the season and it's something that we'll have to do better."

"[We] were playing for 75 minutes [and] we have had good things but not for long enough time to compete for the better result."

The small details are indeed often what decide games in the Premier League — especially in low-scoring games, which make every action, every decision, every little detail just that much more important. That's always the risk with playing a more controlled game. When you play for a goal or two, the impact of mistakes can be a lot bigger than if you know you can put up three or four.

Of course, just going to all-out-attack all the time is not sustainable either. Alonso wants to find the right balance. If he can, we can be very good.

"We knew that it's a process, that it's still five games in a competitive Premier League, that each game is really hard and we knew that it was going to be hard, so it's nothing new."

"We need to [be better] not just at set pieces, [but] in defensive, in duels, in build-up, in control games. We concede the first goal but still during the game and when you lose shape, you are out of control, you concede in a transition […] things that we have worked [on]. So to be able to understand the game, to know what it takes to be competing until the end, it's something that, it's a process, it takes time for them to feel it and at the moment we are not feeling it fully to compete for the whole game."

-Xabi Alonso; source: Football.London

Hopefully this result (and the Hull City one from the previous weekend) can serve as an early-season wake-up call and source of motivation to be better, rather than just the signs of things to come.

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