Chelsea: Marcos Alonso is not the problem and Emerson is not the answer

Marcos Alonso remains one of Chelsea’s most misunderstood and blindly maligned players. His supposed replacement, Emerson, remains an unknown, which in itself says plenty.

Fulham and Tottenham fans seemed to know one thing about Marcos Alonso, and they used that bit of knowledge to ride their high horses straight into the gutter when those teams played Chelsea. Chelsea fans, on the other hand, used those games to dredge up – if not outright confabulate – an image of Marcos Alonso quite at odds with his performance over his two and half years as a Blue.

Alonso’s performance against Fulham was one of his dullest of the season. Maurizio Sarri said in the press conference before the match at Wolves that Alonso had some form of back injury, so it stands to reason that injury was already creeping in when he faced Fulham. Even so, Sarri chose to start Alonso against Wolves.

Alonso’s performance at Molineux was not his best, but was much closer to the norm. Part of that norm, though, is bearing the brunt of the fans’ criticism in complete disregard to his stats, his contributions to the play or his overall level of performance at the club.

No Chelsea player is in the top five in as many statistics in as many categories as Marcos Alonso. Simply by the numbers, he is the Blues’ most well-rounded player. Defence, offence, passing and playmaking, free-kicks (more last season than this season)… Alonso may not always be the best, but he is among the best more than anyone else. His more subtle qualities as just as strong.

From his second season as a wing-back under Antonio Conte to the present day Alonso is one of the most tactically adept defenders in the Premier League. He may not have the speed of his counterparts, but his use of the half spaces, his timing of movements into the opponent’s box and his understanding of when to drop back and defend are all well above his peers’. Alonso truly is the “false 3” of the offence, as much as he is a true left-back when defending his side of the pitch.

Nevertheless, his critics persist. Despite a decent showing against Wolves, many annoying voices want Emerson to have his chance against Manchester City. Because pace, obviously.

That so much of the case against Alonso and for Emerson comes down to pace shows the paucity of both arguments. What do we know about Emerson that gives him a clear advantage of Marcos Alonso? His speed. That’s it. Emerson has not had a performance, shown a skill or demonstrated a tactical attribute that gives him a unique value proposition over his Spanish counterpart. He’s simply faster.

We were among the first and are among the most consistent in calling for Maurizio Sarri to rotate his squad, both to rest his regulars and to experiment with new tactics and combinations.

We do not claim to understand his thought processes (that’s Travis’s department), but we at least recognize some level of uniformity in what he does. More than anything, Sarri does not do what he does not know, which means he will not play who he does not trust.

It took a dead-rubber match against PAOK for Callum Hudson-Odoi to start, but he finally did. It took nearly four months of the season and staring down the barrel of the festive period before Andreas Christensen started a Premier League game, but he did. Likewise, Cesc Fabregas. And Ruben Loftus-Cheek has probably done more to fight his way into the starting XI than anyone else, not least because he had the most players stacked ahead of him and started farthest back in the depth chart.

Whatever Callum Hudson-Odoi, Andreas Christensen, Cesc Fabregas and Ruben Loftus-Cheek have done in training and their secondary competition appearances, Emerson has clearly not done. Maurizio Sarri may operate on a different learning and experimental curve than us, but at this point in the season, his methods and timelines are revealing themselves. And they are not revealing any more trust in Emerson than Antonio Conte had.

Emerson is, in a way, like Danny Drinkwater. Chelsea bought him without any clear reason or path for him, and now the coach and technical director who oversaw his arrival are both gone. He is not untalented, but he is in his own way not right for this squad. And unlike Hudson-Odoi or Ethan Ampadu, he does not have the promise and mystique of youth to justify his inclusion in the XI. Bringing him into the side is not a nod to the future. It’s a meek attempt to justify the past.

Marcos Alonso is dangerously close to being over-worked, which would leave him vulnerable to injury or burn-out, psychological or physical. If that happens, his critics would get their wish and Emerson would get his chance. The former would not be as happy as they think with the outcome.

But blindly throwing Emerson into the Premier League XI on the basis of (a) he’s different and (b) he’s faster is nothing more than tinkering with the lineup for the sake of doing so. This season already has enough shades of the Andre Villas-Boas experiment. Let’s not make it any more so.