Match Review: Chelsea 2-0 Brighton

There was something apt about the storm that kicked off as we headed back from London on Saturday night after another excellent away day ruined by 90 minutes of football.

It was the first real sign that autumn is here and those long, glorious days of summer are over. And that feels rather like where we are in the Graham Potter era right now.

That sunny afternoon at Watford seven weeks ago feels like a distant memory. The incisive, free flowing football that led to so much optimism as we filed out of Vicarage Road is slowly giving way to the grim reality of life near the bottom of the Premier League.

And the reality is that for all the pretty passes, the intent to attack and the chances created, if you don’t put the ball in the back of the net then you won’t get results. If you don’t get results, you might end up relegated.

Now, Chelsea away was never likely to be the place where Potter picked up his second win as Albion boss. While there’s plenty of talk about the Blues being in transition thanks to their transfer ban and having a rookie manager in Frank Lampard, they’re still a quality outfit.

You can always tell how good an opponent is by taking their starting 11 and seeing how many of the Albion’s squad would get into it.

The answer here was a big fat zero, with the possible exception of Lewis Dunk. Chelsea’s stars may be young, but they’re still beyond the level of the pool of players that Potter is working with.

The trouble though is that because we’ve picked up only two points from home games with West Ham United, Southampton and Burnley, there’s now a little more pressure on games like these – which should be free hits.

That run of fixtures at the Amex should be returning seven points at the very least and when it isn’t, suddenly those matches which you don’t expect anything from become games in which you could really do with nicking a point in order to try and keep up with the required run rate of one per game.

This was the simplistic beauty of how Chris Hughton kept us in the Premier League for the past two seasons. Aside from the final five months of the last campaign when things fell apart alarmingly, Leicester City were the only visitors from outside the big six to win at the Amex. We won the vast majority of our home games and so anything picked up on the road was a bonus.

Regarding Hughton, there’s been a lot of rewriting of history going on over the past few months. If you listen to some Albion fans, you’d think that he played a 10-0-0 formation every week and we survived through sheer luck. That does a huge disservice to a man without whom we wouldn’t even be in the Premier League.

Those same voices were curiously quiet on Saturday when Potter’s Albion gave a performance that had all the hallmarks of a Hughton away day.

We didn’t manage a shot until the 91st minute, there were questionable substitutions and players couldn’t make a five yard pass at times. The steward outside the away end who greeted us with “Hope you smash ’em lads” would have been sorely disappointed.

The only reason this wasn’t a cricket score was because Chelsea’s finishing was woeful and Maty Ryan had a welcome return to form.

The Australian made eight saves, including two that you could put in the outstanding bracket, the best of the lot coming from point blank range from Ross Barkley.

Chelsea had 17 shots in the opening 45 minutes, the most by any team in the first half of a Premier League fixture for over six years.

The Albion goal was leading the sort of charmed life not seen since the famous 1-0 win at West Ham United in 2004 when the Hammers had nearly 200 shots and yet Brighton won 1-0 through Guy Butters header.

Any hopes of a similar daylight robbery at Stamford Bridge were out the window within five minutes of the second half as Chelsea took the lead.

Potter had tried to disrupt the host’s dominance by making a change at the break, Gaetan Bong replacing Yves Bissouma with 3-4-3 becoming more of a 5-3-2.

Had Hughton made that sub, then the temperature in the away end would have been approaching 2000 degrees with the amount of piss being boiled.

But it did make sense, even though the Bong haters wound up being up in arms about it. Bissouma started just behind Pascal Gross and Neal Maupay and it was a role that didn’t seem to suit him as he was a passenger at times on his first start of the season.

Which isn’t ideal really. While Bissouma is clearly talented, the defensive side of his game leaves a lot to be desired, especially when playing in a two man midfield like the one Potter has used so far.

If Potter can’t trust him to defend, then chances are he won’t trust him at all. So where does Bissouma fit in within the Albion’s brave new 3-4-3?

At this stage, it appears as though he may struggled to find a role. It will therefore be fascinating to see how Potter uses him going forward.

Bong’s first task after coming on was to watch his teammates attempt to play out from the back, succeeding only in cocking things right up.

Adam Webster was the guilty party, his back pass having even less power than Boris Johnson in Parliament. Mason Mount took full advantage of the situation, chasing onto the loose ball and when Webster’s attempts to retrieve the situation only resulted in him hauling Mount down, Jorginho calmly beat Ryan from the penalty spot for 1-0.

There was nearly a further shambolic goal conceded as a result of some sloppy play, Dale Stephens producing a shoddy back pass of his own which turned into a great through ball for Tammy Abraham, but he was denied by Ryan.

Brighton belatedly offered a bit of a threat once Aaron Connolly joined the action in place of the ineffective Aaron Mooy on 65 minutes.

That led to Big Dan Burn having the best chance of an equaliser when his header from a Pascal Gross corner bounced onto the crossbar.

That miss was punished three minutes later when Chelsea added their second. Dunk attempted a Hollywood pass across the pitch which was cut out, allowing Callum Hudson-Odoi to come forward and tee up Willian, whose shot deflected off Burn and past Ryan.

The Albion’s first effort on target arrived in injury time, Stephens trying his luck from 25 yards but it was a straightforward save in the end for Kepa Arrizabalaga. The Spanish goalkeeper won’t have too many easier afternoons than this as he recorded his first clean sheet of the season.

He won’t be the last goalkeeper to record a shutout against the Albion this season either. And that is where Potter’s biggest challenge lies – finding a way to improve on a paltry record of two goals scored in six games since that win at Watford that had us so giddy with excitement.

As we’ve already said, Chelsea away was never likely to be the game the improvement happened in, even if the Albion hadn’t given their worst performance of the season. Tottenham Hotspur at home next week probably won’t be where goals and points come from either.

But after that, Potter and the Albion need results on the board. The happiness of summer is gone, autumn’s nights are drawing in and winter will soon be on the way. Let’s hope it isn’t one of discontent for the Seagulls.