The sight of Rayan Cherki rolling the ball past Alisson Becker to complete a rout of Liverpool was a crushing moment for any neutral hoping the Premier League is salvageable as a spectacle while the appeal and sanctions hang over Manchester City.
But no matter how big the news, no matter how distracting the story, we should not lose sight of the age-old principle: don’t judge a Premier League season that’s still in its infancy. The last time Man City changed manager they also won their first six matches of the Premier League season – and then they collapsed, finishing third in Pep Guardiola’s debut campaign.
The prospect of City sinking under the weight of those charges, or sinking under the weight of Enzo Maresca’s painfully-slow tactics (as Chelsea did, after a very fast start, in 2024/25), is not the only reason to be optimistic about a Premier League season that matters; that can be fun at the top end of the table despite City and their ghost football.
If you want to reconnect with the competition after a challenging few weeks for us all, take a closer look at Chelsea.
Saturday’s emphatic 5-1 victory over Bournemouth might just be the start of something, the moment things clicked for Xabi Alonso, who, lest we forget, is the most exciting coach in world football and is overseeing a radical overhaul in Chelsea’s transfer policy and tactics this season – all against the backdrop of midweeks free from European football.
On the eve of the 2026/27 season most pundits were drawing the obvious parallels to the last time Chelsea won the title, exactly a decade ago, when a world-class tactician - Antonio Conte – surprised the division with his new ideas, took advantage of free midweeks, and stormed to the title with a 3-4-3 formation.
Ironically, as Alonso’s Chelsea struggle to build momentum, those comparisons have disappeared from the conversation despite their results perfectly mirroring Conte’s start in 2016/17.
Conte, too, won ten points from his first six games – and then accelerated away the moment the fixtures piled up for Chelsea’s rivals.
This weekend marks the beginning of exactly that process for Alonso’s Chelsea. The first round of Champions League and Europa League games, played in early September, coincided with Chelsea’s Wednesday night EFL Cup fixture against Leeds United, meaning this week is the very first time Alonso has been given the advantage of fresh legs and extra time on the training ground.
Bizarrely, nobody seems to have noticed this fact, nor that similarities to the Conte season remain eerily dead on. And nobody seems to have noticed yet another moment of near-perfect symmetry: the significant switch-up triggered on matchday six.
It was in the sixth Premier League game of 2016/17 that Conte finally abandoned the 4-2-3-1 to implement his 3-4-3, instantly sparking a 13-game winning streak in the competition and catapulting Chelsea into first, a position they would not relinquish.
It was in the sixth Premier League game of 2026/27 that Alonso was finally able to start Moises Caicedo, the defensive screen whose energy gives Chelsea the values of two players in one, thus allowing a two-man central midfield to function successfully. Again, this mirrors the Conte title, when N’Golo Kante offered something very similar.
And Caicedo is no less important to Chelsea than Kante was ten years ago, as evidenced by Chelsea's performance against Bournemouth: their ball recoveries were up from a 44.2 average to 56; their successful duels grew by 10% from 49.8 to 57, and, more tangibly, Caicedo had a hand in three of Chelsea’s five goals.
OK, it was a simple pass to get the counter-attack started for Chelsea’s opener. But it was Caicedo’s brilliant anticipation in the counter-press, snapping into action on the edge of the opposition box, that prevented a Bournemouth break and allowed Morgan Rogers to score seconds later. In the final minutes a Caicedo surge drew a foul, with Jordan Henderson converting the resulting freekick.
More important than his attacking interventions is that defensive reactivity, of course. Chelsea have conceded the joint-most goals in the division, but only let in one against Bournemouth, with Caicedo regularly anticipating danger and snuffing it out, in turn letting Chelsea break back the other way through those dual tens Cole Palmer and Rogers.
Caicedo is the glue who can hold the entire system together, the elastic and intelligent box-to-boxer who can get another level out of his team-mates.
Just as it is too early to declare Man City as phantom title contenders, so too would it be unwise to proclaim that Caicedo’s return from injury will instigate a Chelsea winning streak.
But the parallels with Conte are becoming more enticing, not less. On Saturday we get a first look at what those free midweeks can really do for Alonso. Win, and Chelsea should be taken seriously as the Premier League’s best chance of producing an uncomplicated title battle.
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