Chelsea Struggles at Brentford: Set-Piece Woes and Attack Issues

Chelsea went to Brentford worrying about their defending. They left with a new problem: without Joao Pedro, they barely looked like scoring either.

The Brazilian’s knee injury ripped the heart out of Xabi Alonso’s vibrant, improvisational front line. The partnership with Cole Palmer and £117m signing Morgan Rogers had given Chelsea a wild, chaotic edge in recent weeks. At the Gtech, that chaos vanished. So did their resistance.

Danny Welbeck, signed from Brighton to back up and combine with Joao Pedro, stepped in. On paper, a neat solution. On grass, he was a ghost.

Seventeen touches, little service, no threat. At 35, he still knitted play together tidily when the ball reached him, but unlike Joao Pedro he could not conjure chances out of thin air. Chelsea’s attack, once the most dangerous part of Alonso’s project, felt blunt and predictable.

For an hour, the game simmered.

Brentford matched Chelsea stride for stride, neither side able to land a decisive blow. It looked like one of those tight Premier League nights where the first goal wins it.

Then Jaidon Anthony scored – and Chelsea simply disintegrated.

Anthony’s 61st-minute header, a straightforward finish from a corner, exposed an old flaw that Alonso has not yet come close to fixing. Chelsea have now conceded 23 set-piece goals since the start of last season, more than anyone else in the division. Five of those have already arrived this campaign.

The numbers are damning.

Twelve goals conceded in the league, more than any other side, even allowing for the fact they have played a game more. Alonso has now let in at least two in each of his first five Premier League matches – only the sixth manager ever to start that way.

This is not just bad luck. It is a team without defensive structure.

Chelsea tried to tackle the set-piece issue long before Alonso walked through the door. Bernardo Cueva arrived from Brentford two years ago to tighten things up; this summer, Austin MacPhee, another specialist, took over. The churn has not brought clarity.

“Not good enough. At times we have been bullied in the box and we definitely need to improve,” stand-in captain Levi Colwill admitted to Sky Sports afterwards. He backed MacPhee and stressed the players are still adjusting to new ideas, but the evidence is brutal. Opponents smell weakness the moment the ball is placed for a corner or free-kick.

Alonso’s Challenges

Alonso’s own work is under the microscope too.

He has been bold, even restless, in these opening weeks. Systems change. Personnel rotate. Eleven debuts already, with two more at Brentford: 16-year-old Mahdi Nicoll-Jazuli, the youngest player to represent Chelsea in the Premier League, and Jordan Henderson, 36, thrown straight in against his former club.

The XI that started in west London was the oldest Chelsea have fielded since May 2023. Emiliano Martinez, Henderson and Welbeck brought experience and scars. They did not bring control.

For a while, the plan just about held. Chelsea traded punches, Palmer probed, Rogers drifted, and the game felt finely balanced. Emmanuel Emegha’s continued absence through injury meant Rogers eventually moved up front, but this was his quietest outing since leaving Aston Villa. Without Joao Pedro’s movement and invention, the attack lacked a focal point and a spark.

Once Anthony struck, the fragility that has stalked Chelsea for 18 months resurfaced with a vengeance. Brentford sensed it instantly. The home side pressed higher, ran harder, and Chelsea’s composure vanished. Two late goals turned a narrow contest into a 3-0 humiliation.

Post-Match Reflections

Alonso did not hide from the mental side of the collapse.

“I would say that we have dropped our consistency and our competitive mentality in the second half. We know that small details can be decisive,” he said. That word – mentality – has haunted successive managers at Stamford Bridge, often linked to the club’s youthful squad profile.

Here, that excuse did not apply. This was an experienced Chelsea side, one specifically picked to bring nous and resilience to a tricky away game. When the pressure came, it buckled anyway.

Alonso insists he is not searching for alibis. “It’s not about looking for excuses. We need to look at each other and know that we have to work and improve because there is still a long way to go,” he told Sky Sports.

The problem is that the same themes keep repeating.

Set-piece frailty. A soft centre once the first goal goes in. No settled system. No clear defensive identity. The thrilling attacking start under Alonso, powered by Joao Pedro’s six goal involvements in four games and his sharp combinations with Palmer and Rogers, has given way to something more worrying: a team that cannot keep the back door shut and, without its main striker, suddenly struggles to blow it open at the other end.

The international break offers three weeks of silence and scrutiny. Time for Alonso to drill, to decide on a structure, to restore some belief.

Or time for the questions to grow louder about whether this Chelsea side can ever become as hard to beat as it is easy on the eye.