Julio Encisco ruined Frank Lampard’s homecoming with the kind of fizzing strike Chelsea ’s interim boss would have been proud of in his pomp.
The pocket-sized Paraguayan creamed home Brighton ’s winner from 25-plus yards midway through the second half after Danny Welbeck had cancelled out Conor Gallagher ’s opener.
Victory was no more than Roberto De Zerbi’s men deserved after dominating their troubled hosts for much of this game.
They were everything Chelsea would like to be but aren’t — attacking with vim and vigour, defending robustly and transitioning from defence to attack in the blink of an eye.
They often ran them ragged in the final third and would have won by a greater margin than the 4-1 victory they recorded over the Blues in October had they not hit the woodwork twice, seen Kepa Arrizabalaga make three fine saves and wasted several more openings.
So dominant were Brighton, in fact, that only one of the two sides on display here looked like they could give Real Madrid something to think about on Tuesday … and it wasn’t the team who will face them.
This defeat meant Lampard has lost all three games since returning as interim manager and, asked it was the most painful, he said: “It was the most deserved one.
“More than defeats, it’s performance we have to talk about. Wins only come with performance and in terms of performance that was the most disappointing because we were well beaten.
“In the basics of football — and it’s a really good Brighton team so we must give them credit, they’re a fantastic team and they can perform like that against pretty much anyone in the league — but we were short, a yard short, a tackle short, a fighting duel moment short, and when that’s not right you’re not going to win games.
“You have to have the capacity to do that as well, as well as the desire and at the minute we’re falling short on that and we have to turn it around quickly.
“The things that are a must in a performance for Chelsea at Stamford Bridge against Brighton, who can play, are sprints, recovery runs, getting up to people and recovering, and then when you get the ball to stick to ideas you want to stick to, and we came away from that, the capacity wasn’t there.
“I can only be honest, I can’t sit here and say, ‘Not a bad game, we didn’t deserve to lose’, and I don’t think the players would expect anything else because I can see their faces after the game.
“The only thing now that matters is the reaction and that’s what matters now until the end of the season.”
De Zerbi was pleased with the result, naturally, but still not wholly satisfied with some element’s of his side’s display.
Asked if they were more dominant than the game in which his men inflicted the first defeat of ex-boss Graham Potter’s short-lived Chelsea reign, he said: “Yes, we were more dominant.
“We are used to analysing the game depending on the result but we played better here than the last game at the Amex. We could play better in the last 10 minutes but that is a problem of mentality.
“When we scored the second goal, we thought only to finish the game. I spoke after the game to my players about this — if we want to become bigger, we have to improve in this aspect. But the performance, the result, is fair.”
Enciso was impressive all round but De Zerbi added: “I didn’t like him after the goal because after the goal he finished and you have to play, he has to play until the end of the game because if we concede and don’t win the people forget his goal.”
There were plenty of things Chelsea supporters would like to forget about this game and they will be worried, and rightly so, about what Real might do to them given the way Brighton picked them apart.
