Fabian Hurzeler looking forward to testing himself against Xabi Alonso

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Head coach knows what to expect when he comes up against the Spaniard's Chelsea.

Nick Szczepanik

2026-08-30T06:00+01:00

Fabian Hurzeler knows that his side will have to be at their best at Stamford Bridge today. 📷James Boardman

Fabian Hurzeler is looking forward to pitting his wits against new Chelsea manager Xabi Alonso when the teams meet at Stamford Bridge today.

He described the former Liverpool and Spain midfielder, who coached Bayer Leverkusen to an unprecedented unbeaten German double in 2024, as “one of the best managers. He proved at Leverkusen what he's capable of doing.

“He has a clear style of play, he wants to have the ball, and he has of course also now the individual quality. He added some great players.

“We always know it's a big challenge playing Chelsea, not only because of their style of play but also because of their individual quality.

"But we go there with the belief and the courage to beat them.

“And we know it's also for our fans a very important game. A lot of energy will be in the stadium, so we are ready for that and hopefully we can get something out of this game for our fans.”

Key to any success, Fabian said, will be continuing the form shown so far, with eight goals scored in the past two games and no goals conceded in the past three.

“The most important thing now is, can we maintain the standards, the intensity we showed, for example against Villa and against Tromso?

“This will be the main question and the answer we have to give on the pitch, because it's always our foundation to press intense, to be intense, to win personal duels, to force them to make mistakes.

"This is always the foundation of having a clean sheet, and on top of that we know that we can also play better football in possession.

“We know that we have to be very humble, we have to be very grounded, and understand why we were successful against Villa, because we did the basic things right – we were brilliant at the basics.

“This will be very important also against Chelsea, because we know they have this individual quality to punish every team in the league within one second, so we have to be ready from the start.”