Marcos Alonso Has Blown His Last Chance to Save His Chelsea Career

Ben Chilwell's £50m move to Chelsea during the summer always looked to spell the end for Marcos Alonso's time in the starting lineup, but as the Englishman arrived with an injury, Alonso was given a lifeline.

He underwhelmed in the 3-1 win over Brighton and then flopped in the 2-0 loss to Liverpool, after which he watched on as Chilwell made his debut in the 6-0 win over Barnsley. The new signing bagged an assist and looks close to raring to go.

Alonso's final chance came in Saturday's 3-3 draw with West Bromwich Albion, and he absolutely blew it.

A sloppy header gifted the Baggies with an opening goal and a decision to simply stop marking an attacker allowed West Brom to bag a third, after which Alonso was promptly hauled off at half-time.

After the game, manager Frank Lampard told Sky Sports: "You can't legislate for pure mistakes, which they were today, and that gives you a really difficult game to get back into. We showed character and persistence, but we didn't need to if we had done things properly in the game.

"The first one, Marcos heads it into the middle of the pitch from a transition. The second one from Thiago Silva is a mistake. He's been around long enough to know that and we'll give him that one in his first game.

"Then Marcos loses his man for the third goal from the corner. You can do as many meetings as you want, but if you're going to make those mistakes you give yourself a mountain to climb."

Lampard's not usually one to name-drop players after poor performances, but his choice to point the finger at Alonso twice speaks volumes of his frustration towards the Spaniard, whose days as a core part of the Chelsea team are surely numbered.

It's easy to put a lot of the blame on Alonso. At the end of the day, he did make the costly mistakes and there's nothing Lampard can do to prevent them, although you have to question why the boss kept Alonso in his lineup in the first place.

After all, any Chelsea fan will tell you that Alonso has built up a reputation as somewhat of a liability. When deployed as a standard left-back, the Spaniard does not boast the decision-making and positional awareness to survive. That's not a new revelation.

Despite that, Lampard opted to persist with Alonso instead of putting his faith in the defence-minded César Azpilicueta (who is not without his own flaws, for the record), and it's a decision which came back to bite him.

It's for this reason that plenty of rival fans (and even a section of Chelsea fans) have grown frustrated with Lampard. It's all well and good to blame a player for making a mistake, but he's the one putting the mistake-prone players in that position in the first place. There's growth to be done by everyone involved.

Regardless of where you stand on this one, it looks like we're not far off from moving on anyway. Lampard is clearly unimpressed with Alonso and is going to turn to Chilwell as soon as the Englishman is ready.

The hope is that signing Chilwell will iron out all the creases. He won't make errors and Lampard will be able to turn to a player who won't make errors. Everyone's a winner.

Even when Chilwell is unavailable, expect Azpilicueta to deputise, and that means we should now be keeping one eye on the exit door at Stamford Bridge. Emerson was seen as the most-likely departure, but Alonso's performance against West Brom may have been the final nail in his coffin.

For more from ​Tom Gott, follow him on ​Twitter!