The opening weeks of our campaign were entertaining, if not entirely convincing. Our attacking play was undeniably exciting and we scored plenty of goals, but Alonso's side were also conceding an average of two a game in the top flight.

Alonso accepted that wasn't sustainable and emphasised the need for improvement ahead of the three-week international break, which gave him and the Chelsea coaching staff quality time to work with the players not away representing their countries.

That practice was put into action against Bournemouth last weekend. The attacking adventure and invention remained, but the Blues were far more solid defensively, something aided by Moises Caicedo returning from injury and Jordan Henderson making his home debut.

There was greater solidity to our display at Everton, with the Toffees, aside from two good first-half opportunities, restricted across the 90 minutes.

It was notable that after establishing a lead through Pedro Neto's well-taken finish, the home side couldn't build momentum and genuinely threaten our goal. They ended with an expected goals total of 0.43.

Neto credited a half-time tweak from Alonso to improve our build-up as an important factor in the victory, but also explained that the work done during the international break has been implemented in our past two matches.

He said: 'I think during the international break, the manager had a little bit more time to focus on different ideas and try new things, and since we came back, he has been really vocal about that.

'We follow his ideas and we put effort into them, which is most important. And as you saw [against Everton] we had a really good game.'

'The ambition [for the rest of the season] is to take things game by game and then we will see what will happen. The important thing is that we approach every game like it’s the last one and that we continue to compete.'