After playing as many Chelsea games already in 2021/22 as he did in the entirety of the last campaign, Marcos Alonso’s role in the search for success at Stamford Bridge remains as important as ever.

There has been an uncanny symmetry to the Spaniard’s season so far. Having started our first six Premier League matches, Alonso was rewarded with a call-up to the national team for the UEFA Nations League climax.

On his return to club football, he missed the next half-dozen league outings following Ben Chilwell’s recovery of form and full fitness, a run that continued until the England international suffered a knee injury last month against Juventus.

Since then, Alonso has started five consecutive Blues games, stepping in and up to the challenge.

‘It’s obviously never nice to see a team-mate injured and that’s the most important thing,’ the 30-year-old tells us in an exclusive interview.

‘When you don’t play games, it’s always tough but trying to help the team win games is our main job.’

Under Thomas Tuchel, Alonso has been redeployed as a wing-back once again, a role he excelled in during our most recent Premier League title-winning season of 2016/17.

Allowed the freedom to roam forward and cause problems in the opponent’s penalty box, the responsibility certainly suits his attacking attributes, though there has been a subtlety to how the Blues have used their wing-backs this term.

Not always high and wide, as they mostly were during Antonio Conte’s time in charge, the wing-backs have often been positioned infield, allowing space for the forwards to operate on the flanks and forcing the likes of Alonso, Chilwell, Reece James and Cesar Azpilicueta to get involved in the build-up play.

‘It depends on the formation of the opponent, if we are controlling the game and have more freedom to go forward or if we have to defend more,’ Alonso explains of the game-by-game tweaks.

‘I’m always happy with whatever. I love playing on the pitch and if one day I have to stay at the back and help the team then I will do it but it’s also a pleasure if I can go forward and help with assists or goals.

'I just try to listen to what the manager wants and what the opponent requires and try to help the team as much as I can.

‘It’s important to adapt and find solutions to different challenges during a game or depending on who we play against. It’s good to have different options and try to have different ways to cause problems to the opponent.’

Chelsea wing-backs have certainly been a thorn in the side of opposition defences this term, with the aforementioned quartet accounting for over a fifth of our goal involvements in all competitions, Alonso providing the latest in teeing up Mason Mount for our first against Leeds United last weekend.

‘I don’t know why but since I came here to Chelsea, all the defenders have always scored a lot of goals,’ he continues. ‘The wing-back position is obviously important in attacking as well, even if in most of the games our main target is to defend.

‘When we’re able to control the game and to be attacking for most of the time, I think it’s important for us to arrive into those positions as much as we can, to try to help the team with goals and assists.’

The Blues are currently in the middle of the hectic December schedule, with tomorrow’s test against the Toffees our ninth game of the month in three separate competitions.

Alonso is a veteran of the English mid-winter congestion now, having first experienced it as a Bolton Wanderers player 11 years ago, and has seen the demands on the calendar grow incrementally year by year. However, with the rest of the campaign also jam-packed, he sees even less of a difference between the traditionally busy festive period and the season as a whole.

‘It’s as busy as the whole season now,’ he says. ‘It used to be only at Christmas that we had this amount of games but in the last few years, it’s been like this all year that we’ve been playing twice a week.

‘That’s the calendar these days and we have to simply cope with it. It’s not perfect for football for me because it becomes more important the physicality than the quality and I don’t think that helps but it is what it is.

‘We have to try to manage our recovery with the game time and try to be 100 per cent ready all the time because every game is tough. There are a lot of good teams in the Premier League and Champions League so somehow we need to be there again fighting for every title.’

Yet with European matters taken care of until February, the focus can now fully switch to domestic concerns at a time of the season when points can be accrued or dropped at an alarming rate. Five of our next six matches are league encounters, with a Carabao Cup quarter-final squeezed in between, and that means there is plenty to play for every few days.

‘There are so many points in one month and it can change a lot so we have to be ready for that,’ Alonso adds. ‘We were top of the table until recently and that’s where we’re aiming to be at the end of the season.

‘We need to come back stronger all together and get back to winning ways. The most important thing is to focus on ourselves, do our job and then look at the table at the end of the season.

Everton at Stamford Bridge is a particularly notable marker in Alonso’s Chelsea career, his first Blues goal coming in a November 2016 meeting in a big 5-0 win, a low finish squeezed between the legs of Maarten Stekelenburg in front of the Shed End.

If not his best goal in royal blue, it is certainly one that will stay in the forefront of his mind as a landmark one, and perhaps he can even repeat the trick when the Toffees come to town tomorrow.

‘I have some good memories from my first goal,’ he adds. ‘It was not a very nice one but my first so I will remember it for sure!

‘Of course now it’s a different season, different players and a different game so a new challenge. It will be another important three points for us to fight for after Leeds and again we will have to play at 100 per cent to try to get the win.’