Xabi Alonso's task at Chelsea: 46-player squad, baffling transfers and confusing hierarchy

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Xabi Alonso knew perfectly well what he was signing himself up for when he agreed to become the next Chelsea manager."I had a view of Chelsea from the outside," Alonso told reporters while on Chelsea's pre-season tour of Australia. That is why we are taking these steps together and making decisions to build a good team."We don't need to ask Alonso what view he had of Chelsea before he arrived, because the picture has been painted very clearly over the past few years.

Yet, despite having the title of manager, rather than head coach, he will have to do so within the same parameters of his predecessors Enzo Maresca and Liam Rosenior.FOLLOW OUR CHELSEA FB PAGE! After all, this is a club that, defying convention, have five sporting directors.It is a club, that at the time of writing, have 46 first-team players listed on their website.

A club who have, despite their vast swathes of players, spent approximately £336million in the summer transfer window so far, with more no doubt to come.And a club which has, partly on Alonso's say-so, changed their youth-first transfer approach to sign 35-year-old Danny Welbeck and 36-year-old Jordan Henderson.Welbeck's arrival means Chelsea currently have six senior strikers. Marc Cucurella may be gone after his frank criticism of the hierarchy, but senior players Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo - who both publicly flirted with rival clubs during the slide under Rosenior - remain."You need the right balance of personalities and stages of maturity, with players in their early 20s, early 30s and everything in between," Alonso has said of his squad.