Xabi Alonso has been in the Chelsea job barely a month, and already he has a problem most managers would envy on paper but dread in practice: too many players.

According to ONE, the Spaniard, who took over at Stamford Bridge on a four-year deal after Chelsea finished sixth in the Premier League last season and missed out on European football entirely, now has 41 senior players at his disposal. With only 11 starting spots and five substitutes permitted per match, and no continental campaign to help spread the load, the numbers simply do not add up.

That is despite owner Todd Boehly having already committed close to €400m in transfer spending this summer. Chelsea are still not done: ONE reports the club remains in the market for Jordan Henderson, the former Liverpool captain who left Brentford and is reported by multiple outlets to be closing in on a free-transfer move to west London, and Rayo Vallecano left-back Pep Chavarría, with reports elsewhere in the past few days pointing to an agreement worth around €25m.

Adding further to the congestion, Mykhailo Mudryk has resumed team training after the Court of Arbitration for Sport partially upheld his appeal against a doping suspension, ruling his ban should run only as long as time already served. The Ukrainian winger had been frozen out of Cobham since late 2024.

Among the summer's marquee arrivals is Morgan Rogers, signed from Aston Villa for a fee reported at £117m, a deal that made him the club's record signing and, by some counts, the most expensive British player ever sold.

Alonso, for his part, has been careful not to commit to a target figure for his final squad. "Not too many, but also not too few. Exactly how many? I cannot state a number," he said, quoted by ONE. "We must maintain options, as we may face injuries and changing circumstances."

He was more direct about what comes next. "We must remember that there will likely continue to be some movement," Alonso said — an acknowledgement that follows several sales already this summer, with ONE reporting further departures, whether permanent exits or loans, are effectively unavoidable before the window closes.

For a club under BlueCo ownership that has churned through five permanent managers since 2022, the task now facing Alonso is as much about subtraction as addition: turning a swollen, expensively assembled squad into a coherent group capable of competing on only one front this season.