Chelsea’s four worst players in grim Brighton loss as Graham Potter’s Blues embarrassed | Football | Sport
Graham Potter suffered a miserable return to Brighton as Chelsea slumped to their first defeat under their new manager at the Amex Stadium. The Blues found themselves 2-0 down after 14 minutes, and 3-0 down by half-time, as the Seagulls ran riot on the south coast. Chelsea pulled one back through Kai Havertz after the break but couldn’t muster another goal before Pascal Gross made it 4-1 late on. Express Sport looks at four of the poorest performers for the Londoners.
Raheem Sterling
Raheem Sterling has struggled of late and is now eight games without a goal for the Blues. The £47.5million summer signing was again deployed as a left wing-back here and looked out of place, misplacing 50 per cent of his passes.
The former Manchester City man failed to make any real impact on the match and it was of very little surprise that he was among the first Chelsea players substituted off on the hour mark. The wing-back experiment is not working with the England international.
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The playmaker was fortunate to play the full 90 minutes in truth. On a couple of occasions he interrupted the momentum with long-range shots that wasted the team’s forays forward. A softer pass in the first half would also have released Havertz for a one-on-one opportunity but his pass went out of play.
Christian Pulisic
Starting back-to-back matches for the first time this season, Pulisic struggled as a right-sided wing-back – much like Sterling across the other side – and offered little going forward while being suspect defensively. He should however have scored a rebound that he sliced wide after Conor Gallagher’s missed chance.
Pulisic somewhat improved on the left-hand side in the second half but nowhere near enough and was taken off with 10 minutes to go. The American has not helped his cause as he looks for more minutes ahead of the World Cup.
