Match Preview: Chelsea v Brighton
A trip to Manchester City aside, Graham Potter has had a pretty gentle introduction to life in the Premier League. Home games with West Ham United, Southampton and Burnley and away trips to Watford and Newcastle is a relatively easy start to the campaign.
As autumn rolls in though, things are about to kick up a notch. Brighton’s next two fixtures are against Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, two sides who should be challenging for the top four come the end of the campaign – even if they may not be fit and firing at the minute.
First up of those two tough clashes is Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The Blues are yet to win a home game under Frank Lampard, so some Albion fans might be viewing this as a chance to pick up what would be only our second point away at one of the big six in 14 attempts.
But if there is one opponent that a team on a terrible home run wants to face, it’s Brighton. Birmingham City hadn’t won at home for nearly a year when they beat Sami Hyypia’s Albion at St Andrews in August 2014. Fast forward to April and Wigan Athletic picked up their first home win in eight months with a 2-1 success over the Seagulls.
And then there was the most embarrassing of the lot as Alan Pardew finally tasted victory for the first time as West Bromwich Albion – after over 20 attempts – when the Baggies beat Chris Hughton’s men 2-0 at the Hawthorns in January 2017.
That was one of the worst Albion performances we’ve seen in the Premier League so far. At least we know that this trip to the Bridge can’t be that bad.
A brief history of Chelsea
Chelsea were founded in 2003 when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich decided he wanted to get into the world of football. He has since poured billions of his questionably-gained fortune into Chelsea, turning them from a football club who enjoyed sporadic success throughout their history into one who have lifted six league titles, five FA Cups, three League Cups, a Champions League and two Europa Leagues over the past 16 years.
They’ve not always done this in the most classy way, however. Last season, Blues supporters managed to tick off an impressive triple crown of racist, antisemitic and homophobic abuse in the space of eight days when somebody racially abused Raheem Sterling on the Saturday, antisemitic songs were heard on the Thursday in a 2-2 draw against Hungarian outfit MOL Vidi and then someone got arrested for homophobia at the Amex on the Sunday.
Nice.
Chelsea this season
This is being billed as a transitional season at Chelsea as they rely on a core of young players under a rookie manager. Mauirzio Sarri led the Blues to third last year and won the Europa League, but many Blues fans were bored by the football, his insistence on picking the same team over and over and his reluctance to change formation despite it being blatantly obvious that things weren’t working. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Just like Chris Hughton, Sarri paid for that with his job and in his place came Chelsea legend Frank Lampard, appointed because of his achievements in taking Derby County to sixth place in the Championship. A transfer ban for breaking rules regarding signing underage players means that Lampard can’t strengthen his squad and as such, he’s turned to to the talented young players at the club who would otherwise have found themselves being sent out on loan.
Now whisper it quietly, but this approach is almost turning Chelsea into a club that could be likeable – on the pitch anyway. Seeing English players like Mason Mount, Tammy Abraham and Fikayo Tomori playing regularly is not only entertaining, but great news for the English game. With Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Callum Hudson-Odoi returning from injury, the future looks bright for both Chelsea and the Three Lions.
Head-to-head
We’re going to skip over this as much as possible. Brighton have never scored a goal at Stamford Bridge, let alone taken a single point from their visits to the Chelsea over the years. In fact, we’ve never won a league game against the Blues with just one victory from 11 clashes out side of wartime football.
That came in the third round of the FA Cup in 1933, a 2-1 success at the Goldstone delivered by goals from Arthur Attwood and Tug Wilson. Our luck’s got to change at some point, right?
Brighton’s head-to-head record with Chelsea
Last six meetings
• Chelsea 3-0 Brighton (Premier League, 03/04/19)
• Brighton 1-2 Chelsea (Premier League, 16/12/18)
• Brighton 0-4 Chelsea (Premier League, 20/01/18)
• Chelsea 2-0 Brighton (Premier League, 26/12/17)
• Brighton 0-1 Chelsea (Division Two, 15/03/89)
• Chelsea 2-0 Brighton (Division Two, 29/10/89)
Oh yeah, as well as that dire head-to-head record is the fact that we’ve only scored once against Chelsea in our past seven meetings. That was Solly March’s consolation at the Amex last season. About time that changed, too.
Team news
Potter sent out a team of children (and Profit Paul charged £20 for it) alongside Shane Duffy, Gaetan Bong and David Button in Wednesday night’s Camila Cabello Cup loss to Aston Villa as he sought to prevent any of his first team players joining an already lengthy injury list.
That didn’t go entirely to plan as Duffy hobbled out of proceedings and will now be out for several weeks. He joins Leandro Trossard and Bernardo in definitely being ruled out for this one, March faces a late fitness test but Neal Maupay and Glenn Murray are both fit.
Given how well we played at Newcastle, it’s unlikely that Potter will make too many changes – if any. At Manchester City, he played March more central in order to have an extra body in midfield, deploying a 3-5-2 rather than a 3-4-3. Both Pascal Gross and Aaron Mooy could perform that role, so for the first time in the Potter era we could be looking at an unchanged line up.
Chelsea’s key players
The likes of Mount and Abraham have been taking all the headlines, but N’Golo Kante is undoubtedly the best player in Chelsea’s squad currently. The World Cup winner had a difficult time of it last season as Sarri tried to change the way he played, another of the reasons that he the Italian was so despised.
Kante being Kante, he just got his head down and did eventually adapt to a new style of football. That’s actually made him a more rounded player and Lampard is reaping the benefits of that as the Frenchman has been outstanding so far.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Chelsea away
We’ve only been to Chelsea twice and never on a Saturday with our previous Premier League visits taking place on Boxing Day in the 2017-18 season and on a Wednesday night last year. On both occasions, Eden Hazard was absolutely outstanding – a genuine joy to watch such an opposition player.
With this game taking place on a Saturday, hopefully it can provide a more interesting memory for our next Chelsea match preview which involves too much beer, a missed train or a leg of lamb won in a meat raffle rather than praise for an opponent. Nobody wants a day at the football to be remembered for the football do they? Especially when you lose.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Chelsea away
Five hours to get home from Stamford Bridge on Boxing Day as the Chelsea area was completely gridlocked. Who’d have thought holding an event attended by nearly 50,000 people on a day when there was no public transport would have ended in such chaos?
Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Chelsea
Colin Pates, we’re his mates. The defender was something of a hero at Chelsea, making 281 appearances over nine years. He had two spells at the Goldstone, initially signing on loan in the 1990-91 campaign before returning on a permanent basis in 1993, by which time he looked like a Year Eight Maths teacher.
What we like about Chelsea
I’m going on a ‘cheese crawl’ of London soon and half the places you visit are in the Chelsea area. If it’s a good place for cheese, it must be a great place to be.
Prediction
We should have scored away at Manchester City if Leandro Trossard could demonstrate a little more composure in front of goal. Chelsea aren’t anywhere near City’s level, so there is every chance we might grab our first ever goal at Stamford Bridge. The Blues should still be too good though, so a 2-1 win for the hosts.
