Chelsea played confidently en route to a comfortable win over Brighton and Hove Albion. Maurizio Sarri may have gone into the game thinking this was his backup XI, but Chelsea needed exactly the players they had to overcome a smart and well-organized flock of Seagulls.
Per Chelsea’s usual, they did much of the usual against Brighton and Hove Albion on Wednesday. However, they did it with an unusual cast. Maurizio Sarri, self-preservationist extraordinaire, gave Callum Hudson-Odoi his first Premier League start and surrounded the young Englishman with other infrequent league starters like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Olivier Giroud and Andreas Christensen.
Sarri may have thought of this rotation as a necessary evil to rest some players or a distasteful surrender to fan sentiment. But without the rotation, the game would have progressed and ended on the usual insipid terms. The Blues needed the quality that Loftus-Cheek, Giroud and Hudson-Odoi uniquely provide to their positions.
Brighton under Chris Hughton are a classic example of a highly-organized and tactically astute team that are 2-4 top talents short of being comfortably in the upper half of the table. With smart investments in the transfer market, they could be another Bournemouth and Eddie Howe.
Brighton perfectly understood how to manipulate Chelsea in different areas of the pitch to control the danger the Blues posed. When Chelsea defenders had the ball in their own zone, Brighton man-marked Jorginho, removing him as an option for the defenders to play the ball up and out. Even though they did not press the centre-backs, they kept one man closer to David Luiz than Andreas Christensen. With Jorginho out of the equation, this left Chelsea with two options: David Luiz could do something quintessentially hasty and rash, perhaps causing a turnover in his own zone; or let Andreas Christensen dribble or pass the ball out, two areas in which he is less skilled and highly unlikely to spring an attack.
As Chelsea moved into Brighton’s half, the Seagulls dropped off of Christensen. They would like nothing more for Christensen to see open space ahead to dribble into. They invited the more conservative and defensively-capable of the two defenders to leave his post, placing himself in a situation where he was susceptible to a turnover, out of position to recover and toothless for the offence.
Brighton also completely abandoned their coverage of Jorginho. What better way to ensure Chelsea never penetrate the box or have quality chances than to let Jorginho metronome the game into a coma. They stood off Jorginho, waiting for him to telegraph a pass into the box so they could reach his target before the ball.
Once the Blues established themselves in the final third, then, Brighton clogged the penalty area. They deterred any dribbling and blocked most shots or passes that came through. Their spacing and awareness was such that they could cleanly clear the ball after one or two touches. Rarely did the ball pinball around the box with defenders scrambling for control and Chelsea players looking to poach a shot.
Chelsea’s three goals, then, required the sort of quality that immune to upfield tactics and such defensive discipline.
They needed the hard, low cross from the goal line that rarely comes off the feet of Willian or Pedro but that Callum Hudson-Odoi has repeatedly shown he can provide, particularly on the right. They also needed a target man striker who could ghost from the penalty spot to the near post, split two defenders and score off his heel with his back to goal while falling to the ground. Giroud’s penchant for abnormal goals lives on.
Next the Blues needed the sort of goal that only Eden Hazard can score, until three minutes later when Ruben Loftus-Cheek stepped up to out-do the Belgian. Their shots came from small gaps at the top of the box, spaces that would dissuade most players from shooting and preclude anything on target for most who try. They had the space they needed to shoot and created the only possible shooting lane.
Those four players – Callum Hudson-Odoi, Eden Hazard, Olivier Giroud and Ruben Loftus-Cheek – took up the six places on the stats sheet for the three goals and three assists.
Contrary to the FIFA thinking that dominates so much of the chatter around Chelsea these days – including from the manager himself – neither Willian nor Pedro nor Gonzalo Higuain nor Ross Barkley / Mateo Kovacic would have supplied the skill or initiative, let alone the finishing quality, Chelsea needed to finish off Brighton.
The usual XI would have made this game look like the increasingly indistinguishable mass of games in the rearview mirror. John Moss did not look inclined to do Chelsea any favours, and if the Blues were up only 1-0 when Brighton brought on Glenn Murray, this game could have ended quite differently.
Brighton were well-prepared for the usual XI doing the usual thing. Chelsea, though, have the players to overwhelm 12 Premier League teams on sheer quality. Fortunately for them and their top-four ambitions, Maurizio Sarri deployed that quality on a night when they needed it.
Sarri might not see it this way because he probably doesn’t see his players this way, but starting Hudson-Odoi, Giroud and Loftus-Cheek on Wednesday was a nod of respect to Chris Hughton. Anything less in the XI, and things could be blue, rather than Blue.