Chelsea 0-0 Brighton: Three Things We Learned

Chelsea made their way into the top four last night after a goalless draw against Brighton & Hove Albion but in many ways, that doesn’t even begin to tell the story of what happened at Stamford Bridge. From the fans staging a protest before kickoff to the European Super League pretty much dying before it’s already begun, there was a lot to take in.

This isn’t going to be the standard match report that you’ve all come to expect and that’s fine – because player ratings really don’t matter within the context of saving the beautiful game.

Brighton’s grit

Brighton & Hove Albion aren’t guaranteed safety just yet and they need a few more wins to feel completely safe, but they were by far the better and more exciting team here. There’s a lot to be said for the Seagulls and their ability to get at teams, and even though they didn’t score, we saw something resembling progress which always deserves some admiration. They’ll be disappointed to have gone down to 10 men in injury time but as we look ahead to the remainder of the Premier League campaign, we think it’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which they go down.

Worry for Chelsea?

Chelsea had a lot on their mind last night and Thomas Tuchel can easily put a result like this down to all of those odd circumstances, but now that the battle for the top four actually means something again, they have to reassess their strategy. They are an inconsistent team at their very core and they can’t afford for that to be the case in the next handful of games. Between the Champions League, FA Cup and Premier League, there’s a whole lot of drama just waiting to be unleashed.

Salvation for football

We do still think there needs to be some kind of repercussion for the six English clubs involved in trying to make the European Super League work, but at the very least, it’s so good to know that this whole thing won’t be going ahead. Football was made by working class people, and those same folks are the ones who should have a say in the running of their clubs. The 50+1 structure that is held by German clubs needs to be heavily considered and even though we don’t hold out hope that the government will implement it, we love that it’s even a remote possibility in the modern era.