The Blues head to the Stadium of Light for our next Premier League fixture, taking on Sunderland in a 2pm kick-off on Sunday. A quick glance at the league table would suggest the two teams go into the game in very different fortunes.

With three wins from our four Premier League matches since the last international break, Chelsea sit fourth in the table, with a chance to move up to third this weekend. Meanwhile, the Black Cats are stuck in the bottom spot, with just one league win to their name in 2026/27.

However, our manager insisted he isn’t thinking about the league table at this stage of the campaign, when asked in his pre-match press conference if Chelsea’s position was a sign of our progress so far this season under his leadership.

‘The table means not too much because that can change so much in one week, in two games,’ Alonso pointed out. ‘We are taking a step forward, I think, with the ball, against the ball, being more solid.

‘We have a tough opponent, a tough visit to Sunderland, we know what it takes to win there. We know how demanding it will be.

‘The table doesn’t matter. I think that they deserve more points than they’ve got and it's going to be a tough away game.’

Instead, it is the task of building the consistency and momentum needed to be challenging in the upper reaches of the Premier League come May which is taking up Alonso and his team’s attention.

That continues at Sunderland on Sunday, when the Blues will attempt to follow up last week’s 2-0 victory over Manchester United by making it back-to-back wins in the Premier League.

‘As I've said, it’s early days to talk too much about the table. We won the last game, now the focus is to keep winning, winning, winning and to build this mentality to go game by game.

‘We are expecting a tough game on Sunday against a team that do many good things. They should have more points probably and it is not going to be easy, for sure.’