Real Madrid sacked Xabi Alonso in January, half a season into the job, and handed the team to Alvaro Arbeloa. It went badly by every measure available: fewer points, fewer shots, less pressing, more shots allowed, and a dressing room that deteriorated to the point where Federico Valverde missed a Clasico with concussion sustained in a fight with his teammate Aurelien Tchouameni. Seven months on, Alonso manages Chelsea, Arbeloa manages Fulham, and the first Premier League match of Arbeloa's career is against him at Craven Cottage on Monday night.
Fulham got here by losing Marco Silva, who cut the cord after five years and went to Benfica having rarely concealed either his ambition to manage in European competition or his frustration that the club would not fund a stronger squad. Arbeloa is a very different appointment: a World Cup and Champions League winner as a player, a well-regarded youth coach in Madrid, and far less experienced in frontline management than the man he follows. What he brings instead is a line back to his old club. Gonzalo Garcia, who won the Golden Boot at last summer's Club World Cup, has come to lead the attack, Cesar Palacios with him, and two of Fulham's four summer signings are players Arbeloa coached in Madrid's B team. Shahid Khan's line on the appointment was that Arbeloa "believes in giving young players a chance".
There is plenty for a young side to change. Fulham fielded the oldest team in the Premier League last season and recorded the fewest high turnovers in the division, the mark of a team that barely pressed. Their two leading scorers have gone: Harry Wilson, who got 10 and played the best football of his career, to Leeds, and Raul Jimenez, who got nine, to Wolves. Cairney is out with a knee injury until October and Andersen serves the last of a three-match suspension.
Chelsea arrive from a season that ended with a 2-1 defeat at Sunderland, eight days after an FA Cup final lost 1-0 to Manchester City. Enzo Maresca and Liam Rosenior both left during it, Rosenior sacked 106 days into a six-and-a-half-year deal, and Calum McFarlane took over as interim coach. Silva was one of the names Chelsea weighed as the permanent successor before they settled on Alonso, who signed a four-year contract and started work on 1 July. Morgan Rogers, a club-record signing from Aston Villa at £117m, may make his league debut here; he scored on his unofficial one in a friendly against Real Sociedad.