Brighton v Chelsea: History & head-to-head of Seagulls v Blues

Chelsea are one of those clubs who Brighton & Hove Albion have hardly crossed swords with in their 121 history.

It took until 1983 for the first league meeting and to say it has been a fixture which has not offered much joy for the Albion since then would be a slight understatement.

11 times the sides have met in top division and second tier and Brighton are yet to record a single win. In fact, until Alireza Jahanbakhsh scored THAT overhead kick at the Amex in January 2020, the Albion had never taken so much as a point from matches against Chelsea.

Not only was Jahanbakhsh’s stunner one of the best goals in Brighton history, but it also put him in a very select club of Albion players to score against Chelsea in the league.

Previously, only Solly March (Brighton 1-2 Chelsea, December 2018) and Alan Young (Brighton 1-2 Chelsea, September 1983) had managed to breach a Blues defence.

Leandro Trossard became the fourth man to score against Chelsea on the opening day of the 2020-21 campaign in a 3-1 defeat at the Amex.

That was followed by Brighton faring much better in the 2021-22 campaign. Danny Welbeck became the first Seagull to score an away league goal at Stamford Bridge when his memorable last minute equaliser secured a 1-1 draw in West London.

Adam Webster then headed home against Chelsea at the Amex as the return match finished with the same scoreline.

A lack of goals and a points total lower than the United Kingdom’s at Eurovision are not the only problems to have come with fixtures against Chelsea in the past.

Two of the rare meetings at the Goldstone Ground ended in complete disgrace from both fans and players with some of the worst hooliganism scenes that the old ground ever saw.

Over 8,000 Chelsea supporters made the trip to Hove for that September 1983 second tier fixture in which Young scored, the first time that the teams met in a league game.

With Chelsea fans spread in all corners of the ground including the home section, the potential for trouble was there for all to see. Nobody could have imagined the scale of it though as at the final whistle, the visiting supporters launched a pitch invasion from every side of the Goldstone.

The police were completely outnumbered as a full scale riot broke out on the pitch. Chelsea supporters smashed up the North Stand goal and several police officers were injured in the fracas.

Easily the best aspect of the chaos was the role played by Chelsea defender Chris Hutchings. Even though the Goldstone was starting to resemble a war zone, Hutchings decided he still wanted to clap the away support.

The police saw this as Hutchings encouraging the rioters and told him to leave the pitch. Hutchings responded by telling an officer to “**** off” and he was promptly arrested for threatening and abusive behaviour.

In a lovely twist, by the time that Hutchings was in the dock at Hove Magistrates Court, Brighton had paid Chelsea £50,000 for his services. In the space of a few months, Hutchings had gone from being arrested on the Goldstone pitch to playing on it.

The other game to be marred in violence came 10 years earlier when Chelsea made the short trip to Sussex in the third round of the 1972-73 FA Cup.

There were 25 arrests made on the terraces as Chelsea ran out 2-1 winners thanks to a Peter Osgood brace. The violence in the stands was nothing compared to what happened on the pitch, however.

Brighton’s George Ley and the Blues’ Roy ‘Chopper’ Harris both saw red with another five yellows following. The last 20 minutes were particularly brutal as the sides resorted to kicking lumps out of each other, resulting in foul after foul after foul.

Whilst the league may have provided about as much joy as a vegan at a hog roast, the FA Cup has at least given Brighton some fond memories against Chelsea – including one of the biggest shocks that the Albion have pulled off in their history.

It came in the 1932-33 season, the year Brighton famously forgot to enter the FA Cup. Charlie Webb’s side found themselves having to join the country’s non-league clubs in going through four qualifying rounds, meaning that by the time they were paired with Chelsea in the third round, they had already played eight games in the competition including a second round replay away at Wrexham.

Winning 3-2 in extra time at the Racecourse Ground brought the superstars from Stamford Bridge to the Goldstone. Chelsea were packed with England internationals and yet it took less than 30 seconds for the Albion to take the lead through Arthur Attwood.

Tug Wilson added a second in the 65th minute and that did not sit well with Chelsea, the embarrassment of a top division side losing to one from the third tier causing frustrations to boil over.

The Blues did pull one back late on through George Barber but it was too little, too late as the Albion held on for an almighty upset. Brighton would eliminate Bradford Park Avenue in the fourth round before going out in a replay against West Ham United in round five after an FA Cup run that lasted nearly six months, encompassing nine ties and 11 matches.

That 2-1 success remains Brighton’s only peacetime win over Chelsea. They nearly had another in the fourth round of the FA Cup in the 1966-67 season at the Goldstone, only to be denied late on when Brian Tawse’s tremendous volley was controversially ruled out for an infringement.

Had Tawse’s effort counted, then it would have finished Brighton 2-1 Chelsea in front of a Goldstone crowd of 35,000 – the second largest ever home attendance to watch the Albion in the club’s history.

Instead, it ended 1-1 as Dave Turner’s second half equaliser for Brighton cancelled out Bobby Tambling’s fifth minute opener.

The replay went less well as Chelsea ran out 4-0 winners in front of a huge crowd of 54,852 at Stamford Bridge with many more fans locked outside.

Losing 4-0 is a result more in keeping with the peacetime history of Brighton versus Chelsea. During World War II it was a different story as Brighton won five and drew one of their nine games against the Blues.

Scoring goals was not a problem, either. Whilst the Albion only have three league goals in 10 games with Chelsea, Jock Davie managed to score eight times against the Blues in the 1941-42 season alone.

The Scottish striker grabbed a hat-trick in a 3-0 win at Stamford Bridge before notching five in the return match at the Goldstone three months later when Brighton ran out 8-2 victors.

What made Davie’s haul in the home fixture all the more remarkable is that Davie turned up to the game 10 minutes late.