Chelsea\u2019s Premier League opener offered a clear sign of what could make this season different, but it also exposed familiar risks. Under Alonso, the visitors produced a 3-2 win at Craven Cottage, and the central figure was Cole Palmer, who delivered the kind of performance Chelsea had been waiting for.<\/p>\n
Palmer had a hand in all three of Chelsea\u2019s open-play goals. Before the match, there was already a sense of confidence around him, and he justified it quickly by slipping Jo\u00e3o Pedro through for the opening goal after just 31 seconds. That strike set the tone for what was to follow, with Palmer repeatedly finding space, moving with ease and creating problems that Fulham struggled to contain.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old created three chances, misplaced only four passes and added a fine goal of his own to make it 3-1 in the 49th minute. For much of the evening, he looked sharper and freer than he had for a long time, helped by an off-season without the usual demands. His display showed both individual quality and how much Chelsea can gain when he is at full pace.<\/p>\n
Alonso\u2019s flexible 3-4-2-1 gave Palmer the freedom to drift, combine and dictate. The structure around him also worked in moments, especially for Chelsea\u2019s second goal, when Maxence Lacroix pushed forward into a role few would have expected and laid the ball back for Morgan Rogers to score into an empty net. It summed up Alonso\u2019s idea of movement, rotation and unpredictability.<\/p>\n
Yet the defensive side of Chelsea\u2019s performance was far less convincing. Levi Colwill escaped a red card early on, while Fulham were allowed back into the match before Robert S\u00e1nchez came under heavy scrutiny for a series of unconvincing actions, including both goals he might have done more to stop. The ending was made worse when Palmer went off holding his knee, leaving Alonso with a concern despite the opening-day victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Palmer inspired Chelsea\u2019s 3-2 win at Fulham, but his late knee issue cast a shadow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[1836,1981,180],"class_list":["post-18732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-gameweek-1","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}