Chelsea now have three defeats from their last four games and the season appears to be careering badly off-course before the October international break has even arrived.
Brighton grew in confidence and made the man advantage count, with Danny Welbeck scoring twice either side of a Maxim De Cuyper goal.
By the time Behdad Eghabli and the rest of the Chelsea recruitment team were heading down the tunnel to the dressing room after full time, Fernandez’s opening goal felt an awfully long time ago.
Defensive frailties costly again
The figure now stands at 2.2. That is the average number of goals Chelsea have conceded per game since the September international break, and two of the matches in that time have been against Brentford and Lincoln City.
The defending they produced at Stamford Bridge against Brighton was often very questionable.
Naturally, much of it came after Trevoh Chalobah had tripped Diego Gomez and received a red card for the denial of a goalscoring opportunity.
Chalobah had to make the challenge but it was rather clumsy how he got his feet tangled with Gomez, and he had to go. It did not help Chelsea’s cause.
Before long, substitute Josh Acheampong lost Danny Welbeck, who he was supposed to be marking, for Brighton’s equaliser.
Then the visitors went ahead through substitute Maxim De Cuyper, with a goal in which there were no Chelsea players closing down Yasin Ayari’s original cross, nor challenging Mats Wieffer’s knock-down assist, not De Cuyper’s headed finish.
Chelsea were a sea of still bodies, none of them reacting to the situation.
Early shower: Trevoh Chalobah
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Centre-back crisis deepens
Chelsea lost Tosin Adarabioyo and Wesley Fofana until after the October international break when Enzo Maresca spoke at his press conference on Friday, and that was on top of Levi Colwill’s season-threatening ACL injury suffered in pre-season.
Maresca received a rare boost in that regard when he named Benoit Badiashile in the squad for the first time this season, but now Chelsea are without their most senior centre-back, with Chalobah’s red card meaning he is suspended for Liverpool’s visit next Saturday.
That leaves Jorrel Hato, Acheampong and Badiashile as the only fit centre-backs to face the league leaders, though Chalobah’s suspension does not transfer to the Champions League, so he can at least line up against Jose Mourinho’s Benfica back here on Tuesday.
If Chelsea want to crack their defensive woes, getting players sent off is a fine way of putting needless obstacles in the way. The injuries ought to be obstacles enough.
In the past two days, the centre-back options available to Maresca against Liverpool have halved.
Maresca received criticism after the 2-1 defeat at Manchester United for taking off both of his wingers, Estevao and Pedro Neto, and replacing them with Filip Jorgensen and Tosin as a response to Robert Sanchez’s fifth-minute red card at Old Trafford.
Many felt that was a needlessly negative substitution that gave Chelsea no outlet for the remainder of the game, which they ended up losing.
Questions to answer: Enzo Maresca
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Was the situation not similar here? It is true that the returning duo Badiashile and Romeo Lavia were already stripped and ready to come on before Brighton scored their equaliser, but should that double substitution still have gone ahead after Welbeck’s goal?
It did, and Chelsea sat further back, and they conceded twice more.
Reece James shows his quality
One positive to take from an otherwise forgettable day at the office was the tireless performance of Reece James.
The Chelsea captain got stuck into every challenge he contested, and even finished the match as a centre-back despite looking at risk of having to go off earlier on when he appeared to land oddly on his ankle.
He carried on and dug in, in a way too many of his team-mates were not able to.
Towards the end, it was clear he was getting frustrated by his team-mates not communicating.
When he ran down a blind alley and had a pass blocked off by a Brighton player he hadn’t spotted, he roared at the rest of the players, asking them to shout ‘man on’.
This defeat could be blamed on plenty of individuals, but James was not one of them.
