Our new manager has already experienced the support of the home crowd at Stamford Bridge on two occasions, when we beat Real Sociedad in our final friendly of pre-season and then defeated Luton Town to book our place in the Carabao Cup third round on Thursday evening.

For the first home Premier League fixture of Alonso’s reign, Brighton are the visitors to west London in a 2pm kick-off on Sunday afternoon, with the Spaniard expecting another good reception for him and his team from the Blues fans.

‘It’s nice,’ responded Alonso. ‘We are happy to have that support and myself to have this welcome from the fans.

‘I have felt since the first day I was here that they were happy that we were starting this time together. Now is the time to deliver and the time to show it every weekend.

‘We’ve had two games and it’s a good start, but it’s still early days. On Sunday, we have a good game, a good test, to see where we are.

‘We will have bumps in the road, for sure, and we need to prepare for that. How we react, how we stick together, how we keep the mentality will be important.

‘So it’s early days and there have been good things, but there are things to develop and progress as well.’

Alonso has faced Brighton’s manager before, during his time at Bayer Leverkusen, leaving the Spaniard expecting a tough but important test of Chelsea’s early season progress from Fabian Hurzeler’s Seagulls side.

‘I know him very well from Germany, from St Pauli,’ added Alonso. ‘He is developing the team with new players.

‘They are a very intense team that do interesting things. So that’s why it’s going to be a good clash and a good test on Sunday.’