Xabi Alonso and Alvaro Arbeloa may know each other very well, but even after Chelsea’s away win over Fulham, the rest of us are still none the wiser about what either side’s season may really hold.

On a chaotic opening weekend of the 2026-27 Premier League, this match pushed the disorder to its limit. Joao Pedro scored after just 31 seconds, and the madness scarcely eased after that.

You could add Enzo Fernandez’s unexpected introduction to that sense of unpredictability. He began his substitute appearance being booed by almost the whole of Craven Cottage, and ended it with the travelling Chelsea support singing his name. And with Manchester City still hovering in the background, who can say where that story goes next?

And who knows what comes next with Robert Sanchez? How different might the conversation have been if Antonee Robinson had made more of that inviting late lob when the score was 3-2?

For all that, it was a hugely entertaining game, even if not the most revealing one. That was always likely in a season beginning with so many uncertainties, but this was a match that remained hard to read even while it unfolded. It was thrillingly unpredictable.

All three of Chelsea’s front line put in fine performances.

Chelsea barely put together any long spell of pressure, yet still looked outstanding going forward, deeply vulnerable at the back, and ultimately held on for a 3-2 victory. Fulham, meanwhile, looked alarmingly light in midfield and still produced a performance with plenty in it, enough for them to feel genuinely aggrieved by the result.

There was also the major variable of how much these two teams’ styles shaped each other, and whether any of it is even repeatable. It was transition after transition, a match in which so many single touches suddenly left players one on one — like a Bundesliga game being played on fast forward.

Maybe, then, it was inevitable that Alonso eventually came out on top, both because he mastered that league on the way to a Bayer Leverkusen title and because he has a far more expensive squad at his disposal.

From a game that otherwise offered so little logic, though, two big questions obviously stand out.

Fulham bounced back twice after going behind.

The more pressing one is whether Chelsea can genuinely mount a title challenge for the first time in 10 years. The other is whether Fulham are really as vulnerable to relegation as many forecasts have suggested. And the answer to both is the same: it is very hard to say.

Chelsea’s counter-attacking, at least, looks elite, exactly as you might expect from an Alonso side. All of their goals — scored by the three main attackers, Joao Pedro, debutant Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer — came from transitions. In those moments, Chelsea looked at their most convincing. The interchanging was superb, and Palmer visibly relished being able to dictate every move. The passing sequence before Rogers’s goal was particularly impressive.

Even then, though, how much of that was down specifically to the way Fulham played? With only Sander Berge seemingly able to establish any sort of control in midfield, Fulham kept losing the ball in that area, and almost every loose ball appeared to end up at Palmer’s feet.

Yet there was still no sustained spell of Chelsea pressure. Is that how they are going to operate all season, or was this simply circumstantial? Everything came on the break, despite a defence that did not exactly look robust.

Morgan Rogers scored on his Chelsea debut.

That part of the side does not currently look ready for a title race. It creaked repeatedly under fairly basic Fulham pressure, especially when Gonzalo Garcia was putting them under the kind of press for which he is well regarded in Spain. There were too many occasions when Chelsea’s defensive structure was dragged out of shape, and that says a lot given Fulham could not really sustain that pressure for long stretches. There were 20 minutes in the middle of the first half, and then shorter bursts in the second.

That intensity demanded some major interventions to stop the situation becoming even worse for Chelsea. Joshua Acheampong produced two of them, which at least suggested that the individuals can still grow and gradually come together better as a unit.

That unit, though, still appears especially loose in one crucial area. Sanchez allows too much through him. A succession of Chelsea managers have clearly seen something in him, but it is difficult not to dwell on the mistakes. For Fulham’s first goal, after admittedly slack defending in front of him, Sanchez simply let Josh King’s shot slip through his arms. For the second, he did get both hands to Timothy Castagne’s well-struck effort, but only managed to push it into the path of the waiting Garcia, who scored on his debut.

Robinson missed a huge chance to level things late on.

Given how active Chelsea are still expected to be in the market, it is hard not to wonder why they would not make a move there. What about Emiliano Martinez?

And what of Fulham? The main takeaway from this defeat is that there is real defiance in them. Arbeloa sets his side up in a way that should at least make every one of their games an occasion. They are prepared to have a go, to take teams on, despite the danger created by the gaps in their structure.

Gonzalo Garcia scored the fifth goal of an end-to-end game.

It made for a terrific match, even if it remains difficult to know what kind of season any of this points to. Perhaps we will all have to wait for that with most teams. This game simply pushed that uncertainty to an extreme.

And maybe that is one lesson in itself. For now, just enjoy the ride.