This was the afternoon when Xabi Alonso’s Chelsea went from swashbuckling to stoic, thrilling to tenacious.

For all Alonso’s attacking vigour at the start of his reign, there can have been no more symbolically satisfying victory under the new coach than this resolute win at Everton – the most vivid example of an increasingly impressive transformation.

This was what Alonso described as “winning in a different way”. A triumph amid the adversity of losing goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez to what appears to be a serious injury after a head collision with Jarrad Branthwaite is just one facet of why the joyous visiting supporters might consider this an early turning point.

Where recently they wilted, on Saturday they thrived in securing a first Premier League clean sheet for nine months.

Much more of this and the adjectives which were splattered across Chelsea during the golden years of José Mourinho – solid, robust and dogged – will be part of the Stamford Bridge lexicon once more.

“Just one day,” Alonso warned,…