Ferdi Kadıoğlu, Jack Hinshelwood, and Danny Welbeck scored as Brighton comfortably took Chelsea apart, winning 3-0, and moving up to sixth in the Premier League.
Story of the Match
Pascal Groß and Karou Mitoma combined for the equaliser at Spurs on Saturday. The same combination nearly paid off after mere seconds at the AMEX, if not for the hand of former Seagull Robert Sanchez pushing the ball over the crossbar.
From the following corner, the ball landed at the feet of Ferdi Kadıoğlu, who smashed it low and hard, via a deflection off Jorrell Hato, and it nestled into the bottom corner.
The Blues' last clean sheet in the Premier League came in Liam Rosenior’s first on January 15th when they beat Brentford 2-0, a run of 12 matches.
Sanchez was required again to deny Jan Paul Van Hecke from arrowing a header home for 2-0.
The most concerning part for Chelsea was that they had the ball on the edge of the Brighton box, Pedro Neto slipped, and allowed Kadıoğlu to carry the ball over half the pitch without anyone on the away side being able to get near.
Rosenior had set up in a back three for the first time in the Premier League at Chelsea, which was a disastrous decision considering the first 17 minutes.
It was even more calamitous seconds later when Sanchez gave the ball away, leaving Hinshelwood with an open net, only to be denied on the line by Trevoh Chalobah.
Compared to the Chelsea team that won the Club World Cup in the summer, this was a shell of that.
Brighton fans chanting 'ole' in the 30th minute just summed up how bad Chelsea were in the first half, but also how well the Seagulls had played.
The midfield trio of Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia, and Enzo Fernandez had been like holograms in the first-half, and were very lucky that it was only 1-0.
The back three plan was immediately binned at half-time, with Alejandro Garnacho replacing Wesley Fofana, allowing for a switch to a back four.
Chelsea had shown more encouraging sides in seven minutes of the second half than in the entirety of the first.
Brighton appealed heavily for a penalty on Marc Cucurella, but VAR saw nothing in it.
Chelsea then appealed for a penalty for a handball on Yankuba Minteh, Brighton countered down the other end with Georgino Rutter playing it to Hinshelwood, who fired a reverse shot past the feet of Robert Sanchez.
Mitoma nearly scored another wonderful goal to go with his strike at Spurs, flicking the ball up away from Neto before smashing a volley attempt way wide of Sanchez's goal.
Kadıoğlu, was denied a second by the palm of Sanchez, who did very well to push it away from goal. Seconds later, the Spaniard dived to his left to deny the Turkish international from range.
Garnacho came close to halving the deficit, but Chelsea still had not managed a shot on target 76 minutes into the game.
The night was made for Brighton when Danny Welbeck made it 3-0 in added time. One long pass from Bart Verbruggen was collected by the England forward.
He played it to Maxim De Cuyper, he squared it to Welbeck to fire into the roof of the net, his 13th league goal of the season.
The defending from Chelsea was pathetic in truth, no effort, no desire, and summed up by the Brighton fans chanting, 'Can we play you every week?'
What it means?
Chelsea had lost five in the Premier League for the first time since the 1993/94 season; it was the first time they had achieved that without scoring since 1912.
Being seven points behind Liverpool with four games to go, Champions League hopes for next season were as good as dead.
In truth, they would need to show a lot more than they had if they wanted to get anywhere near European football.
They had an FA Cup semi-final to try and rectify things, but would need to be much improved in order to make the Final.
For Brighton, hopes of another European season were reignited after a poor mid-season run. Four wins in their last five games have them dreaming of another European tour.