Trevoh Chalobah\u2019s second half dismissal turned a 1-0 advantage into a 3-1 defeat for Chelsea at home to Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday. Chelsea dominated the opening quarter hour and continued to press, with Marc Cucurella fizzing a shot wide soon after and Reece James forcing an impressive save from distance.<\/p>\n
The visitors were breached 25 minutes in. James\u2019s cross took a wicked deflection and looped to the back post, where Fern\u00e1ndez was unmarked to head into an empty net. Brighton threatened at times in the first half, notably through Yankuba Minteh down the right, but offered little end product as Chelsea held 70% possession and outshot their opponents 9\u20130 in a comfortable first 45.<\/p>\n
The match pivoted shortly after the interval. An early second-half injury scare for Reece James was quickly followed by Chalobah\u2019s red card, given for denying a goalscoring opportunity five minutes after the restart after a poor touch from Andrey Santos put his teammate in trouble. Chelsea\u2019s control evaporated and Enzo Maresca made defensive changes, sacrificing a midfielder and a winger for two extra defenders as he prioritised protecting the scoreline.<\/p>\n
Brighton grew into the game. Danny Welbeck volleyed wide before converting a header with 13 minutes to go to level the match and set up a nervy finale. VAR dismissed a late penalty claim for Brighton, and a stoppage-time scuffle involving players from both sides underlined the tension of the closing stages. Maxim De Cuyper then headed beyond Robert S\u00e1nchez in the 92nd minute to complete Brighton\u2019s comeback, which was followed by a further Welbeck strike deeper into stoppage time to seal the 3\u20131 scoreline.<\/p>\n
Individual ratings from the Chelsea side reflected a mixed performance: Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez led the ratings at 7.7, Mois\u00e9s Caicedo received 7.0, Reece James 6.1 and Robert S\u00e1nchez 5.8. Substitution Josh Acheampong, introduced for Santos in the 54th minute, was given 4.9. The result leaves Chelsea disappointed after a dominant first half and a second-half collapse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chalobah red card turned a 1-0 lead into a 3-1 home defeat as Brighton completed a late comeback 92′<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[944,878,215],"class_list":["post-3151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-andrey-santos","tag-brajan-gruda","tag-carlos-baleba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}