Xabi Alonso will begin his first Premier League job at Chelsea on July 1, and the club have already set the early shape of his summer with five new players agreed in advance of pre-season. The four-year appointment gives Chelsea a clear line into next season, but the first weeks of the new era will be defined as much by who can join the squad as by who has already signed.
One name near the front of that conversation is Mike Penders, who impressed on loan at Strasbourg and is set to compete with Robert Sanchez for a place next season. The Belgian goalkeeper is in his country’s World Cup squad, so his arrival on the pre-season tour will depend on how far Belgium go, though Chelsea and Alonso will hope he can make the first leg in Sydney in late-July.
The same tour planning applies to the rest of Chelsea’s early business, with the club set to travel across Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia. Getting one of the new faces on the plane would give Alonso a quicker look at his group, and Chelsea could use that after agreeing deals for five signings before the season has even begun.
Dastan Satpaev is another of those arrivals, with the teenager joining from Kairat Almaty this summer. Kazakhstan did not qualify for the World Cup, so the 18-year-old will not be involved there, and it is more likely he will go out on loan elsewhere in Europe to build senior experience before he is asked to make his mark at Stamford Bridge.
At the other end of the scale, Emegha is due at Cobham over the summer after being left out of the Netherlands squad for the World Cup campaign. He had an injury-hit season, and even with a full pre-season ahead of him, breaking through in his first year may be difficult given the competition for the No. 9 position, where Nicolas Jackson could still have a role to play.
Chelsea’s other incoming faces also come with their own timing issues. Barco is arriving from Strasbourg this summer, but reports from Argentina say he has not been selected to represent the country. Quenda, meanwhile, is preparing for his move from Sporting CP after an emotional departure and will hope to make the most of the delayed returns of Estevao Willian and Pedro Neto during pre-season training.
That mix leaves Chelsea with something rare at this stage of a new manager’s tenure: a transfer plan already partly in place, but not a settled squad. Alonso is arriving to manage in the Premier League for the first time next season, and the early test is not just tactical. It is whether Chelsea can turn five signings, several international schedules and a packed tour into a clean start.
