The scenes at full-time after Chelsea lost 3-0 to Brighton shattered the image of a completely broken club.
Liam Rossenia had apologized to the fans who were asking for his head throughout the second half.
And Enzo Fernandes wore the captain’s armband and shrugged his shoulders to his fellow fans, despite his comments about moving to another team.
Enzo Fernandes shrugged off Chelsea’s away end at full-time
“We think Rosenior can be successful in the long term,” he said a week after co-owner Behadad Egbali was in the crowd and a “We want Bruko out” flag was hoisted at the away team.
On the pitch, Chelsea were equally miserable. The flow of the match was decided from the moment Kaoru Mitoma made a save from Robert Sanchez in just two minutes.
Use Chrome Browser for a more accessible video player
Highlights of the Premier League match between Brighton and Chelsea
The Blues’ lack of fight was also seen in duels.
It took Chelsea players 32 minutes to complete the first tackle of the game. By halftime, 10 of 11 starters had not made a single shot.
Chelsea have been put ahead in 34 out of 34 games by all of their Premier League opponents, so it was no surprise that they were limp off the ball.
Chelsea have been on the losing side in every Premier League game this season.
Granted, that particular statistic requires context. Chelsea are not expected to outscore their opponents in most games, as they ranked high in possession, especially when Enzo Maresca was in charge. When you have the ball, your team will be chasing you for a longer period of time, so naturally you will get passed.
But look at the teams that have Chelsea in the list of most overachieved teams. This season, their performance has been poor. This Chelsea team is an underperforming team. And they could end up finishing in the bottom half of the Premier League table this week.
Marc Cucurella watches in disbelief full-time
What makes the data even worse is that the message is not getting through to Chelsea’s players. Rosenior described the team’s habits as “indefensible, unprofessional and unacceptable”, but Chelsea defender Trevo Chalovar had a different view.
Use Chrome Browser for a more accessible video player
After the 3-0 defeat to Brighton in the Premier League, Trevo Chalovah defended the efforts of his team-mates by suggesting that the players had tried their best to implement Liam Rosenior’s game plan and had tried hard.
“I think the players were knocking their socks off,” the centre-back said. “If you look in the locker room, everyone is tired. It has nothing to do with effort. We gave it our all. We lost today.”
Brighton ran 7km more than Chelsea on Tuesday night. So if Chelsea were “knocking their socks off”, what were Brighton doing? There’s a clear disconnect between players and head coaches that even Rosenior can’t deny.
Brighton beat Chelsea by 7km
“Judging by that performance, it looks that way,” Rosenior said in a press conference. “I’m not going to lie, that was unacceptable.
“I don’t feel that there is a disconnect between me and the players. We work very closely with them in training, individual meetings and team meetings. We give everything to the players. There is a lack of spirit and belief.”
Use Chrome Browser for a more accessible video player
Chelsea manager Liam Rosenior has insisted his side’s 3-0 loss to Brighton in the Premier League was an “unacceptable” performance and told his players he never wanted to see it like that again.
But the headlines are under attack. Not scoring in four games in the Premier League is bad enough, but what about not even having a shot on target in the fifth game?
The underlying data is even worse than just “no shots on target.” His expected goals (xG) of 0.04 in the first half was lower than in any of Maresca’s first 114 Premier League games as Chelsea manager, but it shows how far they have fallen.
It would be easy to use injuries as an excuse, but Chelsea were without Cole Palmer, João Pedro and Estevao up front in the south coast. But this is a team that cost £1 billion to form. Pedro Neto and Alejandro Garnacho are established players in the Premier League, and Liam Delap was one of the first signings of the summer.
Rosenior will ultimately be criticized for not getting the best out of this Chelsea team, especially considering Maresca had stepped up his game before leaving. His decision to revert to a 5-3-2 formation for the first time in the Premier League looked desperate, but his decision to revert to a 4-2-3-1 at half-time was even more foolish.
“It’s a really tough job for any manager to survive in this environment,” said Tim Sherwood. “Chelsea is a development club.”
Perhaps it was fitting that BlueCo’s Chelsea project was exposed in such brutal fashion in Brighton. Since Chelsea’s new owners arrived, they have worked hard to recreate what the Seagulls looked like.
They hired Paul Winstanley, one of Brighton’s sporting directors, as their main player, and since taking over they have poached a huge number of players and backroom staff from the Seagulls. Rosenior is the second former Brighton player to reign at Chelsea after Graham Potter, and even his belief in youngsters is very ‘Brighton-esque’.
It would be an absolute shame to be beaten home and away by the team they have always been loyal to. Chelsea tried to rebuild the club, but everything went wrong. Now, there is an urgent need to change course again.
