Brighton 3-0 Chelsea: Match report & 4 talking points from Blues capitulation | OneFootball

Chelsea were lucky to escape the south coast with a 3-0 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion on Friday night.

Kaoru Mitoma opened the scoring for the hosts in spectacular fashion before a brace from Yankuba Minteh on either side of the interval sealed all three points, but Brighton could easily have twisted the knife even deeper into this soft-centred Chelsea side.

Enzo Maresca's out-of-sorts visitors have not beaten English opposition away from Stamford Bridge for more than two months and have won just two of their last nine Premier League games at any venue.

How the game unfolded

Perhaps given the proximity of the previous meeting between the two sides, Maresca tried to catch Fabian Hurzeler off-guard with a reshuffled frontline. Chelsea couldn't take advantage of the early confusion which briefly clouded the Seagulls, who quickly settled into a 5-4-1 formation off the ball to neutralise their visitors.

Much like last week's cup tie, Friday's contest settled into a pattern of each side patiently taking it in turns to try and play out of the high press deployed by the other.

Brighton's Bart Verbruggen broke this sequence of prim passing with one fizzed punt forward shortly before the half-hour mark. Kaoru Mitoma had Trevoh Chalobah panting in his ear but still managed to pluck the ball out of freezing night air with astonishing grace. The Japan international needed two more prods to set himself for a crisp shot into the bottom corner from the edge of the box.

The technical complexity of Mitoma's moment of magic was writ large over the faces of his teammates, who were swept up in a heady mix of shock and awe. Danny Welbeck was not alone in describing it as a "wow moment".

Enzo Fernandez had the ball in the back of Brighton's net before the interval but was swiftly penalised for a blatant shove on Joel Veltman. Within a matter of seconds, the Seagulls were celebrating again.

Carlos Baleba pounced upon a loose clearance and a dextrous burst of interplay between Welbeck and Georginio Rutter steered the ball into Minteh's stride inside the penalty box. A deft first touch left Marc Cucurella in a knotted heap before the forward drilled Brighton into a 2-0 lead.

Chelsea's former Brighton left-back was put through another spin cycle by the same opponent in the second half. After the visitors gave away another cheap high turnover, Minteh played a one-two with Welbeck around an entirely unenthused Jadon Sancho and Cucurella before stepping around the wild-haired full-back and drilling in his second goal of the evening.

Player ratings

Check out our player ratings from Brighton 3-0 Chelsea here.

Brighton teach Chelsea the lessons of modern football

"Today modern football is the way Bournemouth, Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool play," Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola gushed last month. The Seagulls encapsulated the threat of their multi-faceted approach against a Chelsea side led by Guardiola's former assistant, Maresca, which is stuck in the past.

Faced with Chelsea's stringent man-to-man marking scheme, Verbruggen opted to go long, teeing Mitoma up for a one-on-one with Chalobah which he emphatically took advantage off.

This should have been no great surprise for Chelsea. Guardiola ditched his own short buildup approach to hurt the Blues with City's long balls less than three weeks ago. As Guardiola neatly summarised after that 3-1 win: "When it's man-to-man and they jump to the keeper, you can make a two-against-one with the keeper. But when it doesn't happen, you have to play [long ball to] Erling [Haaland], because if you win that ball it is a chance."

Chelsea's false nine roulette goes bust

Christopher Nkunku earned another start in Nicolas Jackson's absence / Steve Bardens/GettyImages

"When you don't have a proper nine, you need to use a different kind of nine [and] you need to change the way you play. We will find a solution," Maresca claimed this week after it was confirmed that Nicolas Jackson would be sidelined until April.

At least half of that statement was true. Chelsea did change their way of playing; Christopher Nkunku spent much of the first half drifting out to the right wing while Cole Palmer and even Enzo Fernandez took turns spearing through the middle. Unfortunately, it was not a successful solution.

After failing to force Verbruggen into a single save, Maresca ripped up his plans during the half-time interval and sent Nkunku into a more orthodox centre-forward role. That didn't work either.

Ex-Seagulls sink on south coast return

Levi Colwill did not enjoy his AMEX return / Bryn Lennon/GettyImages

Familiarity breeds contempt. Brighton have not become unhappily acquainted with Chelsea merely over this six-day double-header, but the steady flow of personnel - be it players, managers or technical directors - from the south coast to west London has morphed this particular fixture into a modern rivalry.

Three members of Friday's starting XI all spent time at Brighton before joining Chelsea - a decision which the home crowd never grew tired of criticising them for. Moises Caicedo arguably had the most impressive performance of any Chelsea player, yet still departed the pitch to a chorus of "What a waste of money".

Levi Colwill and Marc Cucurella did not cover themselves in glory, with both of Minteh's goals coming down their holographic attempts at defending the left flank. Robert Sanchez, Chelsea's demoted goalkeeper who spent a decade on Brighton's books, must have been grateful to hide on the bench underneath a snood that covered everything but his eyes.

Cole Palmer's drought becomes more worrying

Cole Palmer was kept on the periphery of Friday's game / Bryn Lennon/GettyImages

Heading into Friday's fixture, much was made of Palmer's failure to provide a single Premier League assist since 4 December. However, during that period, Chelsea's talisman created 32 chances, the most of any player in across Europe's top five leagues, per Opta. On the south coast this week, Palmer didn't create a single sight of goal for his teammates to miss.

It's the first time that the ephemeral playmaker has drawn a creative blank in a league game since April 2024 - yet, on that night against Everton, he happened to score four goals himself.

Palmer still remains the division's most creative player this season and is hardly the only Chelsea forward who failed to perform at the AMEX. While Noni Madueke has been allowed to sulk and Pedro Neto can wheel around the final third aimlessly without much consequence, Palmer going off the boil all but quashes Chelsea's entire attacking threat.