Chelsea’s clash against Sunderland on Sunday was Xabi Alonso’s 10th Premier League game in charge and one to surely forget.

Chelsea lost 1-0 as Levi Colwill was terrorised by Brian Brobbey. The Blues’ defence has been a major talking point this season, as has their midfield.

On paper, their attack is the strongest area of the team. Individually, Cole Palmer, Morgan Rogers and Joao Pedro are incredible forwards. And collectively, they have played well alongside each other.

However, how Chelsea get the ball to them and build up attacks under Alonso is a big issue right now. Simply put, Chelsea seem to lack any sort of attacking patterns. In attack, there is no attacking identity.

Under Alonso, is Chelsea’s offensive strategy to counter-attack? Is it creating overloads out wide and playing cut backs into the box? Are they a team who want to play crosses into the penalty area? The truth is, at the moment, Chelsea are mainly scoring goals through individual quality.

Rogers’ goal against Manchester United last weekend where he ran through their team and dinked the ball over Senne Lammens is a perfect example. Chelsea’s xG is also further proof of the above.

According to Sofascore, they registered an xG of just 0.53 against Sunderland. It is a low figure and obviously no goals resulted from it.

When Rogers and Palmer cannot outperform their xG, that is what you are left with: low xG with zero goals on the board.

Alonso needs to quickly find out what exactly this Chelsea team is. Of course, Pedro’s absence is hurting Chelsea right now. But even when the Brazilian was playing, he was scoring some difficult chances and not converting opportunities that were created by an elite and elaborate set-up crafted by Alonso.

Pedro has scored five goals this season, but his xG is only 3.57, as per WhoScored. He has had to use all of his quality to produce some very difficult finishes.

Thankfully, Pedro is set to return after the international break. But every Chelsea fan should be concerned not by the team’s attack on paper, but rather Alonso’s failure to come up with a strategy that can create more opportunities for Palmer, Rogers and Pedro.