Arbeloa took Xabi Alonso’s job in January, and his first Premier League game is against him

Fulham host Chelsea at Craven Cottage on Monday night, 12.30am Tuesday in India, to close the opening weekend. Alvaro Arbeloa replaced Xabi Alonso at Real Madrid seven months ago and now meets him in the opposite dugout.

In January, Real Madrid sacked Xabi Alonso and handed the team to Álvaro Arbeloa. On Monday night at Craven Cottage, Arbeloa takes charge of his first Premier League match, and the man in the other technical area is Alonso.

Fulham against Chelsea closes the opening weekend. Kick-off is 8pm in London, which is 12.30am on Tuesday in India, and the two managers have known each other since they played together for Spain and for Madrid.

Two men who swapped one job and then found two more

Alonso lasted seven months at the Bernabeu. He was gone by 13 January, and Arbeloa, who had been coaching in the Madrid youth setup, took the senior team for the remaining 28 games of the season. Neither ended the year where he started it. Chelsea appointed Alonso in May on a four-year contract that began on 1 July. Fulham hired Arbeloa in the summer after Marco Silva left for Benfica, ending five years in charge.

Arbeloa has never managed a senior club side outside that Madrid caretaker stint. Alonso arrives at Stamford Bridge as the fifth permanent manager Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital have appointed since buying Chelsea in 2022. Neither of them has a Premier League match as a head coach behind him at his current club.

They finished last season in the same place, more or less

Chelsea were tenth last season on 52 points with a goal difference of plus six. Fulham were eleventh on 52 points with a goal difference of minus four. Two west London neighbours, separated in the final table by goals scored, and neither of them in Europe this season.

What they did about it looks nothing alike. Chelsea have spent north of £330m, most of it on Morgan Rogers, who cost £117m from Aston Villa and is now the most expensive British player in history. He is 23, signed until 2033, scored 21 goals in 85 Premier League games for Villa and helped them win the Europa League. Maxence Lacroix arrived too, and Jordan Henderson came in on a free.

Fulham went younger, and to Madrid. Gonzalo García, a 22-year-old striker who made his Spain debut this year, cost around £34m. César Palacios, a 21-year-old midfielder, cost about £8.5m. Arbeloa knows both of them from the Real Madrid first team and from Castilla, the reserve side he coached before that, so this is less a scouting triumph than a man buying the players he already trusts. Shea Charles came from Southampton in a deal worth up to £30m, which makes him the most expensive Northern Ireland player there has been, and the 18-year-old Jonah Kusi-Asare signed permanently from Bayern Munich, who kept a buy-back clause. Harry Wilson went to Leeds.

The last time these two met, Fulham won

On 7 January, Fulham beat Chelsea 2-1 at Craven Cottage. Raúl Jiménez and Wilson scored either side of a Liam Delap equaliser, and Chelsea played most of it with ten men after Marc Cucurella was sent off in the first half for denying Wilson a clear chance.

The detail that dates that afternoon: Liam Rosenior watched it from the stands as Chelsea’s incoming head coach. He has already been and gone. Wilson, who scored the winner, is a Leeds player now.

Team news

Arbeloa has close to a full squad. Tom Cairney is the only injury absence, and Joachim Andersen sits out the last game of a suspension, which means the centre-half Fulham lean on will be back from next week rather than this one.

Chelsea’s squad is a good deal deeper than the one that lost here in January, and a good deal newer. Sign that many players in one window and the first XI is partly guesswork for a while. Fulham at Craven Cottage on a Monday night is an early, awkward place to start finding out.

What to watch

Fulham won the last meeting at Craven Cottage, in January. Chelsea have a new manager, a new record signing and no European football to distract them. Arbeloa has a squad that finished last season level with Monday’s opponents, and a first Premier League team sheet to write.

If Chelsea’s summer means anything, it should show up in the first hour. If it does not, the questions that followed Alonso out of Madrid will find him again quickly.