There is no way of telling whether Chelsea have reached the bottom of this current trough of form, or whether there is further to fall – and all this humiliation has not come cheap for the new owners.
It has taken £600 million to look this ordinary, and no small part of that paid in fees and managerial compensation to Brighton, who completed the league double over Chelsea on Saturday. If October’s win at the Amex Stadium was a defiant howl at the recently-departed Graham Potter, this was a sophisticated dismantling of a post-Potter Chelsea team going nowhere.
The venture capitalists in charge are venturing where few Chelsea administrations have gone before.
They are 11th with a run of two draws and two defeats in the Premier League that is the club’s worst sequence of results since the dark days of 2015-2016, when Jose Mourinho lost the plot a second time around.
That season, when Mourinho was sacked in December just one point above the relegation zone, offers the closest comparison to current events. The club finished 10th then, between two title-winning seasons.
Todd Boehly was pictured after this defeat involved in what looked like a robust exchange of views with supporters in the tier above his hospitality box. The club declined to comment on the nature of the discussion but there is no question that patience is close to breaking at Stamford Bridge. What performance comes against Real Madrid on Tuesday is anyone’s guess.
The oft-quoted reassurance offered on the Boehly-Behdad Eghbali consortium is that no one becomes a billionaire without being the smartest man in the room. Although here that status belonged to Tony Bloom, the Brighton chairman. His team were outstanding, led by Potter’s successor, Roberto De Zerbi.
Frank Lampard, the third Chelsea manager this season, endured his third defeat in three games as caretaker manager and saw his side losing their duels all over the field.
Was it the worst of the three defeats? “It was the most deserved,” Lampard said, “and I think at the moment, more than defeats, it’s performance we have to talk about. Wins only come with performance and in terms of performance that was the most disappointing because we were well beaten and it’s the basics of football again.”
This was, he acknowledged, a fine Brighton side who could beat anyone on their day. “But we were short – a yard short, a tackle short, a fighting-duel moment short. You must have the capacity to do that as well as the desire, and at the minute we are falling short on that. We have to turn that around quickly.”
Lampard picked this side with the two-goal deficit to Real in mind. He gave Mykhailo Mudryk 90 minutes, presumably on the basis that the Ukrainian needs confidence although it was hard to say whether that paid-off, aside for his assist for Conor Gallagher’s goal. Wesley Fofana looked like he might have got injured when he was one of four replaced just before the winning goal was swept past Kepa Arrizabalaga by substitute Julio Enciso.
Among the four who came off were Christian Pulisic and Raheem Sterling, both unable to have an effect on the game.
In the meantime, Boehly might have been forgiven for wondering why his recruitment department had overlooked Kaoru Mitoma and Pervis Estupiñán, as well as Moises Caicedo, whom they at least tried to sign. Of the five match-day staff, including Potter, and one player whom Chelsea had appointed from Brighton in September, only goalkeeper coach Ben Roberts and Marc Cucurella remained. Both spent the afternoon on the bench.
Everything that could go right for De Zerbi did, with the exception of two first-half injuries; one to the very promising Irish striker Evan Ferguson and the other to full-back Joel Veltman, both of whom will now miss next Sunday’s FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United.
First-half substitutes Danny Welbeck and Enciso scored the goals, with Welbeck heading home from a Pascal Gross cross and Enciso, on for Veltman, hitting the winning goal in front of the Shed in the second half with a right-foot hit that would have graced Lampard’s own, lengthy catalogue of great strikes.
“I can’t sit here and say, ‘We didn’t deserve to lose’,” Lampard said. “The only thing that matters is the reaction and that’s what matters now until the end of the season.”
Brighton were able to conjure more attempts on Chelsea’s goal – 26 – than any team at Stamford Bridge since records began. What might Real do with that kind of freedom?
