Brighton 3-0 Chelsea

Chelsea were lucky to escape the south coast with a 3-0 defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion on Friday night.

Kaoru Mitoma opened the scoring for the hosts in spectacular fashion before a brace from Yankuba Minteh on either side of the interval sealed all three points, but Brighton could easily have twisted the knife even deeper into this soft-centred Chelsea side.

Enzo Maresca's out-of-sorts visitors have not beaten English opposition away from Stamford Bridge for more than two months and have won just two of their last nine Premier League games at any venue.

How the game unfolded

Perhaps given the proximity of the previous meeting between the two sides, Maresca tried to catch Fabian Hurzeler off-guard with a reshuffled frontline. Chelsea couldn't take advantage of the early confusion which briefly clouded the Seagulls, who quickly settled into a 5-4-1 formation off the ball to neutralise their visitors.

Much like last week's cup tie, Friday's contest settled into a pattern of each side patiently taking it in turns to try and play out of the high press deployed by the other.

Brighton's Bart Verbruggen broke this sequence of prim passing with one fizzed punt forward shortly before the half-hour mark. Kaoru Mitoma had Trevoh Chalobah panting in his ear but still managed to pluck the ball out of freezing night air with astonishing grace. The Japan international needed two more prods to set himself for a crisp shot into the bottom corner from the edge of the box.

The technical complexity of Mitoma's moment of magic was writ large over the faces of his teammates, who were swept up in a heady mix of shock and awe. Danny Welbeck was not alone in describing it as a "wow moment".

Enzo Fernandez had the ball in the back of Brighton's net before the interval but was swiftly penalised for a blatant shove on Joel Veltman. Within a matter of seconds, the Seagulls were celebrating again.

Carlos Baleba pounced upon a loose clearance and a dextrous burst of interplay between Welbeck and Georginio Rutter steered the ball into Minteh's stride inside the penalty box. A deft first touch left Marc Cucurella in a knotted heap before the forward drilled Brighton into a 2-0 lead.

Chelsea's former Brighton left-back was put through another spin cycle by the same opponent in the second half. After the visitors gave away another cheap high turnover, Minteh played a one-two with Welbeck around an entirely unenthused Jadon Sancho and Cucurella before stepping around the wild-haired full-back and drilling in his second goal of the evening.