Our first outing in this season's competition comes at Stamford Bridge, as we welcome the Hatters to west London.

Alonso has made five changes to the side that defeated Fulham on Monday evening, but the likes of Maxence Lacroix, Reece James, Cole Palmer and Morgan Rogers have all been named in the starting XI.

'We want to have a good start in the Carabao Cup after the Premier League,' explained the Blues boss. 'For sure, playing at home, it needs to feel good and hopefully it will be a good start here this season.

'We want to take all the competitions seriously – for sure, this season all of them are a target. For each game, we choose the best competitive team we think and this one is good enough to go through.'

Penders, who was part of our squad at last summer's Club World Cup before spending the 2025/26 campaign on loan at Strasbourg, is handed his maiden outing for the Blues.

And Alonso has enjoyed working with the 21-year-old Belgian so far. He said: 'We want that he enjoys [himself], that he has composure and maturity, that he gets used to playing in a new stadium with new team-mates.

'So far, he is very mature for his age – it was great that he played very competitive football last year in Strasbourg. Now this is the next step, and we need to help him.'