Austin MacPhee Joins Chelsea: Alonso’s Backroom Gets a Set-Piece Mastermind

Chelsea are not just taking Villa’s best players this window – they’re taking the man who made them dangerous at set pieces too, and frankly, that tells you everything about how seriously Alonso is building this backroom.

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have reported, that Chelsea are on the brink of appointing Austin MacPhee as set-piece coach – with the 46-year-old understood to have already bid farewell to players and staff at Villa Park on Friday ahead of his move to Stamford Bridge.

MacPhee at Chelsea – the Villa poach that stings more than any transfer

Frankly, this is a brilliant piece of business. MacPhee arrived at Villa from Midtjylland in August 2021 and was retained through the managerial changes that followed Dean Smith’s departure – a clear signal of how highly the club rated him. His influence on Villa’s dead-ball threat under Emery was tangible: at the close of last season, Villa scored from set pieces in three successive matches, with Youri Tielemans netting in the Europa League final against Freiburg, Morgan Rogers scoring against Liverpool, and Ollie Watkins converting against Manchester City.

He also balanced those club responsibilities with the assistant manager role for Scotland and, most recently, with Portugal at this summer’s World Cup. This is not a journeyman coach being picked up on the cheap – this is one of the most credible set-piece specialists in European football joining Alonso’s staff. We covered the £117m Morgan Rogers signing in full, and MacPhee’s appointment feels like the natural extension of that same ruthless logic: take Villa’s best assets and build something around them.

What it means for Alonso’s setup – and what Villa have lost

Alonso’s Bayer Leverkusen side were not especially renowned for set-piece threat, which makes this appointment feel deliberate rather than incidental. As we saw in early training coverage under Alonso, the focus on structure and detail is obvious – adding a coach of MacPhee’s calibre to that environment makes a lot of sense. This is a backroom being built with real intentionality.

For Villa, losing Rogers and MacPhee in the same window is a genuine double blow. Emery praised MacPhee’s contribution after the Europa League final, describing him as a fantastic creator who brought relentless attention to detail across every training session. That voice is now gone from Villa’s technical area and sitting in ours instead.

We’ll take it.

In other news…

Read more about Chelsea’s record-breaking £117m signing of Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa and what it means for Alonso’s squad.

We also covered Xabi Alonso’s first words as Chelsea manager and the priorities he set out from day one at Stamford Bridge.

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