First Interview : Xabi Alonso's Chelsea ambition is 'To be as high as possible'

You've had plenty of ferocious battles out on that turf in your previous life, when you look out there do you have fond memories or cold shivers down the spine? I would say fond memories because as you say I remember a lot of energy in the stadium, a lot of energy, competitive energy on the pitch and that's what you need to perform and to compete and I'm for sure now we're really looking forward to it. The club here only had seven wins and seven defeats in the Premier League here last season, how do you go about turning this place back into a fortress? We need to build not just football ideas as well as to build a good mentality, a competitive mentality, how we want to compete, how we want to perform when the moments are tough, how we come back from those moments with our energy, with our strength and togetherness. In the last four years Chelsea have won a European Trophy, the Club World Cup but in the Premier League they've also been two seasons of 10th and 12th, where is this club right now, what will you be competing for this season? Time will tell but for sure the aims and the ambition is to be as high as possible and time will tell where we deserve to be but this is the time to start now, to take the right decisions, to be smart taking those decisions to have a good team and after once you have the good team you need to create this football how we want to play and how we want to compete. How do you want to play, what can we expect from your Chelsea team? Time will tell, it's for me easy to say, we're going to play like this but we want to play good football, we want to be active, we want to be aggressive, these players they know how to play and we want to play good, competing well. You have so many good players already, can I pick out one, Cole Palmer had a frustrating time last year with injuries and form, he's had a summer off, have you seen the benefits in him already of that? Well we've been already a few days together training and what I've seen is that he's come in good spirit, he wants to prepare himself well, he wants to forget about the injuries that he had and if we get the best from Cole we will have a better team, a better Chelsea. And as we sit or stand here now you're just a few days away from your first game, tell me about the tour you've got, how excited are you to be on the touchline the first time? Yeah it's still a few weeks to go, I'm now excited about daily work, getting with and working with the players and that will come, I'm for sure looking forward to it but still that's at the end of our thoughts. I only asked that because he asked me to! Thanks Xavi.