If you’d asked Chelsea fans about their expectations before the start of the season, you’d have received a pretty broad range of responses – but very few would have complained had they been told that their team would be in the conversation for the top four placings after a quarter of the Premier League season.

They might have grumbled a bit about the idea of losing 1-0 to the league’s bottom team, admittedly, which is what happened on Sunday when Xabi Alonso’s side suffered defeat at the Stadium of Light. It’s a result which only left Chelsea two points shy of Liverpool in fourth, which is no disaster, but it was also a performance which raised questions about whether they’re really contenders for the European places again – and whether their much-vaunted attack is quite as threatening as it initially seemed.

Why the Premier League table has been flattering Chelsea

Sunderland were rock bottom before Enzo Le Fée’s penalty earned them the points against Chelsea, and they deserved all three of them – the visitors enjoyed the vast majority of possession but looked entirely impotent with it, and it was Régis Le Bris’ side that delivered most of the meaningful pressure.

Drawing a blank against the bottom side may not sound like a great advertisement for Chelsea’s new head coach or for the so-called ‘JP Morgan’ attack, even if a third of that triumvirate was absent, but there are plenty of stats which suggest that Sunderland haven’t been anywhere near as bad as the table might suggest.

The source of the worry is less the scoreline or the opposition than the fact that there are also an awful lot of stats which suggest that Chelsea haven’t been anywhere near as good as fifth place might imply – and in particular, that their attack isn’t as free-flowing as it looked earlier in the campaign.

Only two teams - Manchester City and Brighton & Hove Albion – have scored more goals than Chelsea over the first 10 matches of the Premier League season, but half of the top flight has achieved more expected goals. And no matter how much stock you set by xG, the fact that Chelsea’s chances have amounted to a near-identical goal threat to that of Everton and Crystal Palace, who have now taken over from Sunderland as the league’s bottom dwellers, should be cause for some concern.

At the Stadium of Light, Chelsea enjoyed just under 69% of possession and dominated the ball in the second half, but did almost nothing with it. A smattering of half-chances was all that a midfield worth hundreds of millions could muster. Sunderland ended with fewer shots but quadruple the xG. It may not be a perfect stat, but on this occasion it told the story quite accurately.

Nor can that impotence in the final third be blamed solely on the absence of striker João Pedro, who should return from a thigh injury after the international break. The quality of his finishing wouldn’t have mattered all that much given how few meaningful chances were created – it’s noteworthy that Cole Palmer, Pedro Neto and Morgan Rogers each successfully completed just one pass into the opposing penalty area. There was no service to work with whatsoever.

None of this is new, per se, but Chelsea’s form has plummeted over the last few weeks. At the beginning of the season, the xG model told us that they were getting ‘lucky’ but that could still be reinterpreted as a reflection of the quality of their attackers, and their capacity to make something out of nothing. It’s almost impossible to put a positive spin on their performances against Sunderland or Tottenham Hotspur, however, or the way that they played against Manchester United before Lisandro Martínez got himself sent off.

Is Xabi Alonso to blame for Chelsea’s recent form?

The upshot of Chelsea’s recent struggles is that the jury remains out on Alonso a few months into his tenure at Stamford Bridge. Is he the creative tactical mastermind behind Bayer Leverkusen’s legendary 2023/24 invincible season? Or the struggling coach who couldn’t get the players to follow instructions at Real Madrid?

Although Alonso has reportedly been given more input on transfer dealings than any previous Chelsea manager since the BlueCo takeover in 2022, he is still working with a squad whose composition is very different from the one which he had at Leverkusen. He doesn’t yet seem to have figured out how to get a tune out of them.

During that golden year in Germany, Alonso operated with a 3-4-3 system which leaned heavily on the attacking talents of the wing-backs, Jeremie Frimpong and Alejandro Grimaldo, players who not only offered width but has the pace and ball-carrying skills to burst into the box ahead of the twin number 10s to score or create chances from inside the penalty area as well.

Bundesliga defences couldn’t work out how to cope – there was always another run into the box that they had to pick up, another player to cover on the overlap or underlap. They were overwhelmed, and Leverkusen went undefeated.

At Chelsea, however, Alonso has far more conservative full-backs at his disposal and a squad which was designed to play 4-2-3-1. The Spaniard simply hasn’t cracked the code yet – he has built a team which can control the ball but which doesn’t yet do very much of note with it. There is a lot of sideways passing and a lot of wasted pace and dribbling, but very little penetration.

The fact that Cole Palmer seems to have gone back off the boil doesn’t help. He started the season well but has been anonymous of late – or actively abysmal, as he was against Spurs – and it’s fair to wonder whether his exclusion from the latest England squad wasn’t just about availability but also about his form.

The good news is that the international break has arrived at the right time to facilitate a mental reset, João Pedro should be back imminently, and while they may be fortunate to have put so many points on the board, they are in a perfectly promising position in the table. If Alonso can’t work out how to get that attack ticking over quickly, however, the table might start to become a little less pleasing to look at.