A shame Chelsea no longer look a total shambles
Chelsea between the summers of 2022 and 2024 must rank as the biggest shambles of a football club in English top flight history – and Brighton fans were fortunate enough to have a front seat to the action.
More than £1 billion spent to win no silverware and secure a highest placed finish of eighth. From Thomas Tuchel to Glow Up Graham to Frank Lampard to Mauricio Pochettino to Enzo Maresca, they have rattled through five managers at significant cost.
A quarter of that billion pounds was handed straight to the Albion. Yet despite the Blues thinking they were asset stripping Brighton of all their key players and most important staff, the Seagulls still managed to accumulate more points over the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons than Chelsea – 110 to 107.
How can you take £250 million-odd of talent from one club and still end up not being better than them? It has proven a frequent source of embarrassment to Chelsea followers, who will flood social media posts with: “bRiGhToN aRe a fInIsHeD clUB, wHeRe iS yOuR cHamPIonS lEaGuE?”
As if winning the Champions League is all that matters. On which basis, presumably Chelsea were nothing until 2012. And as for being a finished club?
Well, the Albion nearly were back in 1997 when Bill Archer, David Bellotti and Greg Stanley sold the Goldstone Ground and tried to run the club out of business to pocket the profits.
Here we are. 27 years later. Having survived 14 years homelessness. Nearly dropping into the Conference twice. 11 seasons playing at an athletics track. Having so little money that Doug Loft was a marquee January signing.
Going from all of that to play Europa League football. That is the sort of journey which the beautiful game is all about.
Not having some gangster who ended up being booted out of England because of his links to Russia launching an illegal war in Ukraine use billions of questionably obtained roubles to buy success.
The anger from Chelsea fans towards “finished club” Brighton was at its peak during the 2022-23 season. Six weeks after Glow Up and his entire backroom staff left for Stamford Bridge, they were humiliated when Roberto De Zerbi oversaw a 4-1 Albion win at the Amex.
Potter never recovered. By the time De Zerbi took his troops to West London six months later, Lampard was in temporary charge. New manager, same outcome.
The Albion won 2-1 for their first ever league victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. As De Zerbi said so wonderfully when the Blues responded to losing twice to Brighton by paying £140 million for Moises Caicedo and Robert Sanchez: “Bigger clubs can buy our players but they can’t buy our soul or spirit.”
Caicedo in many ways epitomises what has happened to Chelsea recently. Having cost a British record transfer fee of £115 million, he spent most of last season looking more like a £15 player. The Blues were a joke and Caicedo, Sanchez and Marc Cucurella were three of the biggest laughing stocks.
So far this season though and Caicedo has been delivering the kind of performances which helped sweep Brighton to sixth place in 2022-23.
It might be early days in the 2024-25 campaign, but Chelsea too look better than they have at any point since Todd Boehly arrived at the Bridge. That could all yet change, of course.
Boehly and his fellow owners Clearlake Capital embarking on a civil war over ownership of the club is something the rest of English football will delight in.
Especially if it comes with perfect timing at the exact point the Blues look to have sorted themselves out on the pitch, causing the disappointingly good work done my Maresca so far to fall about.
To watch Chelsea take apart West Ham United at the London Stadium last weekend was to worry about the damage the Blues could inflict on Brighton.
Chelsea have pace in abundance across their front line. They were frequently sprinting clear of the Hammers defence. A fast attack against the Albion’s high defensive line will look to the more pessimistic of Seagulls supporters like a disaster waiting to happen.
Wolves Reserves and Nottingham Forest took advantage of the way Brighton defend under Fabian Hurzeler to score four goals past the Albion.
If a Paraguayan playing for Forest who I had never heard of before last Sunday can have a field day, it is frightening to consider what Cole Palmer and Nicolas Jackson might do.
How the youngest permanent head coach in Premier League history sets up at Chelsea will therefore be fascinating. Does he hand a first start to Ferdi Kadioglu in an attempt to inject more pace into the defence?
Or change formation to a back three and use Carlos Baleba as central defender, similar to the libero tactics which delivered such success at St Pauli?
He could even stick with the same approach, based on a back four of Joel Veltman, Lewis Dunk, Jan Paul van Hecke and Jack Hinshelwood having conceded only one-goal-per-game against Manchester United and Arsenal.
That though would be to disregard the fact United should have scored twice were it not for the greediness of their own player getting a perfectly legal goal ruled out for offside.
The Arsenal game meanwhile might have turned out very differently were it not for Declan Rice picking up a second yellow card early in the second half and a series of excellent saves from Bart Verbruggen.
Whatever Hurzeler does – or doesn’t – d0 to adjust to the threat posed by Chelsea, this a tough game for Brighton. A free hit, if you like.
Lose as many will be expecting and who cares? A squad which cost more than £1 billion to put together should be beating the Albion and doing so handsomely.
But if Brighton win? I for one will laugh my head off all the way down the Fulham Road before thoroughly enjoying the deluge of comments about the Albion being a fInIsHeD clUB.
