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Chelsea have been many things over the course of their history, but shy has never been one of them.

Whether admired or disliked, Chelsea have always operated on their own terms and without any apology. The outcomes, of course, have not always been consistent.

They are the only club outside Manchester to have won five league titles in the Premier League era and, more importantly than that, they achieved it in their own way. At the same time, it is now 10 seasons since the Blues last lifted the league trophy, and even that does not fully capture the chaos and fluctuation of the years in between.

Chelsea have swung from looking like a basket case to appearing brilliant and then back again, collecting silverware almost despite the influence of individuals who should never have had so much power in the first place.

If that swinging, uneven progress has become The New Chelsea Way, then newly appointed manager Xabi Alonso may now be on the verge of guiding the club towards a far more positive turn.

They are still being closely monitored by UEFA, and financial regulations mean a club with little natural self-restraint has had to find methods of avoiding a situation in which it must dramatically curb itself, but taken as a whole, their summer transfer activity carries a genuine sense of promise.

Even if some of the deals already completed seem unexpected on paper, the overall package surely looks stronger than what was there before. A club that seemed consumed by complete bedlam only a few months ago now suddenly appears to have a squad capable of putting matters right.

There is no getting away from the scale of the spending, but when Alonso looks around the Chelsea dressing room at Fulham at the start of the season, he will see established players who justify that investment.

Morgan Rogers joined from Aston Villa for a British record fee of £117 million. He may not have the highest floor by elite-level standards, but Rogers is the sort of player who can and will decide matches on his own at the very highest level.

If Rogers represented the flashy, headline-grabbing signing, then defender Maxence Lacroix looks a far safer and steadier piece of business. Chelsea reportedly paid Crystal Palace more than £52 million for the France centre-back, but he is already a proven and familiar commodity.

The move for Geovany Quenda had been wrapped up well before Alonso took charge, but Atalanta right-back Marco Palestra, now a senior Italy international, is another smart addition and still has the better part of 15 years in football ahead of him. Since then, 22-year-old Valentin Barco has also arrived.

At 26, Lacroix is by some distance the oldest of Chelsea’s major new arrivals. Or at least he would have been, had Chelsea not produced a typically dramatic swing in the opposite direction.

Seemingly worried by a shortage of experience and leadership, the Blues chose not to spend heavily on players in the middle age bracket and instead went all in on increasing the squad’s average age with a pair of seasoned veterans.

There is nothing especially clever about signing 36-year-old Jordan Henderson and 35-year-old Danny Welbeck, other than having the clarity and conviction to recognise that they were required.

Henderson brings steel, know-how and the presence to demand the highest standards from Chelsea’s younger players. He would not have imagined himself arriving at Stamford Bridge three years after leaving Liverpool, but one season at Brentford was enough to persuade Alonso of the midfielder’s value.

Before following the now familiar route from Brighton & Hove Albion, Welbeck delivered the finest season of his career. He had never scored more goals in a single Premier League season, and in 2025-26 he also made more appearances than in any previous campaign.

Having reached double figures in consecutive Premier League seasons – the first and second such instances of his career – Welbeck stands out as a credible depth and rotation option for a manager who would rather work with Joao Pedro and the veteran than wait for a version of Liam Delap that may never truly emerge.

One way or another, the Blues have put together a squad capable of stabilising from the foundations upward and mounting a serious challenge towards the top of the Premier League at exactly the moment they need to do so. Failing to qualify for the Champions League again is barely worth contemplating.

The idea that they ‘can’ do it has often been valid; in FourFourTwo’s view, the feeling that they ‘will’ do it is more persuasive this time.

Alonso has inherited a side with quality and balance. There is depth in the squad. There are goals in it. There is energy, creativity and the ability to affect matches. In the end, it hardly matters whether Chelsea ever looked beyond one signing before deciding on the next.

They may have jumped from one player profile to another in the transfer market, but the West London club are not stumbling around in the dark. By appointing former Aston Villa set-piece specialist Austin MacPhee, Chelsea made clear their determination to gain an edge in the smallest details.

Alonso has a plan, and he will be putting it into action in what appears to be a favourable environment.

The teams that finished above them last season will all have to juggle European football this term and Chelsea, in one form or another and for the first time in quite a while, seem to have combined financial muscle with smart thinking in their summer recruitment.