Chelsea’s ‘soft’ problem is impossible for Xabi Alonso’s luxury attack to solve

In the end, Chelsea clung on for a brave point. Emiliano Martinez made an important late save. They survived a barrage of set-pieces. And when Cole Palmer stood over a free-kick 30 yards from goal, with the last kick of the game, he pumped it into the stands just to be safe. A draw against a team who were, for much of the afternoon, top of the league? You have to take it.

Of course that wasn’t quite the mood at Stamford Bridge when the final whistle blew on this 2-2 draw. A volley of boos rang out and it was hard to know exactly who they were for. The players, perhaps, who were collectively disconnected and at times individually calamitous. The referee, Farai Hallam, who at one point intercepted a Chelsea counterattack with his feet and picked up the ball with his hands, like a schoolteacher at the end of break time. Chelsea were exasperated when he waved away several handball shouts.

But really it was an outpouring of frustration, that as talented a front three as Chelsea possess, they cannot possibly outscore a defence as chaotic and porous as this one. Chelsea have conceded at least two goals in all four Premier League games this season, 13 goals in six games in all competitions, and that is too much for Palmer, Joao Pedro and Morgan Rogers to overcome every weekend. Arsenal, by comparison, have conceded only once.

Chelsea went from 1-0 up to 2-1 down in six minutes, and Xabi Alonso accused his players of “soft” defending. “We are attacking better than defending,” he understated. “It’s just four games, but the dynamic in terms of conceding, I don’t like it, and we need to do much better. Open play, set-pieces, long balls – this toughness, this competitive sense, we can do better.”

Perhaps there was also some confusion mixed into the fans’ outpouring, after a game when Alonso’s team didn’t always make sense. Why was Maxence Lacroix not at the heart of defence from the start? Why doesn’t the manager trust Estevao Willian when Chelsea are chasing a game? What exactly is the purpose of Malo Gusto?

The first Hull goal was particularly troubling from Chelsea’s perspective. Wesley Fofana watched a long ball fly over his head, Gusto lost a 50-50 in the corner and Jorrel Hato lost his senses, misjudging the flight of the cross like it was his first time encountering this strange bouncing sphere. Mohamed Belloumi couldn’t believe his luck as the ball hopped over Hato, and he took the opportunity beautifully with a low drive under Martinez’s body.

Moments before Hull’s second, it was quite obvious to everyone in the stadium before the corner was taken that Belloumi was alone in a sunny glade on the edge of the box. He pleaded for a pass which didn’t come, and yet still had no Chelsea player near him by the time the ball flew into the middle, bounced off the bar and rolled out to his feet. This time his finish took a couple of fortunate deflections, but you couldn’t say Hull deserved any less.

Martinez did not have his finest afternoon. He flapped at the corner which led to Belloumi’s second goal, and in the second half fumbled a routine shot which almost presented the ball to Oli McBurnie to tap in what would have most probably been the winner.

Another recruit from Aston Villa with improvements to make is Austin MacPhee, Chelsea’s hirsute set-piece coach, who bobbed around the technical area waving his arms and looking generally exasperated with players who apparently weren’t following his instructions, as if somehow that wasn’t his fault. Some of Chelsea’s intricate attacking corners almost worked, when Palmer would ghost to the front post and receive a low pass, but they need to spend time on the defensive side.

These are early days, of course. Alonso is still learning his best combinations. Chelsea will be better when Moises Caicedo returns, when Marco Palestra finally begins his career here. But for all their successful trading, earning a billion pounds in sales since BlueCo took over, there was a sense that some past players were missing. Trevoh Chalobah, for example, was Chelsea’s best defender for large parts of last season and would surely have enhanced this ragged display.

The only positive is that their attack continues to fire. Rogers and Pedro produced clinical finishes in each half, and while it wasn’t Palmer’s best game, he played a major hand in both goals. Palmer has a habit of drifting to the fringes when it becomes congested, partly out of an instinctive feeling of where the space is, where the opponents’ soft spots are, and partly out of frustration at a lack of involvement. He loitered on the left and then drove into the box to feed Pedro, who lashed a first-time finish into the roof of the net.

But they could not find another, and if anything it was Hull who looked most likely to score a third. No Premier League team have been involved in as many goals as Chelsea so far this season, but Alonso would much rather they were not the top flight’s great entertainers.

“I hope that one day you say it was a boring game and we won,” he said. “For sure, it’s some repeated patterns that we are making. It will take time to fix them. When we get the lead, you still need to be competing and not give the chance so easily for them to come back.

“Especially in the first goal, we can do much better. It was too soft to give them this hope because until then we were controlling, we were creating chances … It was from a long ball, two bounces. The way it happened, you need to be very, very aware, and very ready that the danger can come from any situation. If you are soft or if you are not prepared, you will get punished.”