Chelsea 4-2 Brighton - Four historic goals for Palmer, but Blues still lack control

Cole Palmer became the first ever Premier League player to score four goals in the first half of a game as Chelsea won an entertaining and breathtakingly open match against Brighton at Stamford Bridge.

The victory is Chelsea’s four in their last five in the league, continuing a positive start for Enzo Maresca’s side.

The Athletic’s Liam Twomey analyses the key talking points from a Blues perspective…

This is just what Cole Palmer does

Jogging along in front of the silenced Brighton fans in The Shed End, Palmer greeted his fourth goal in 20 first-half minutes at Stamford Bridge the same way he reacts to seemingly anything: with a charmingly nonchalant, slightly mischievous grin.

There was no reason for him to know in the moment that he had made Premier League history as the first player ever to score four goals in the first half of a match, but it is unlikely that the knowledge would have changed anything about his reaction. This is just simply what he does, and Brighton were the latest victims of his ruthless brilliance.
Such a record seemed to belong in the realm of fantasy when Palmer raced onto an Enzo Fernandez through ball in the 19th minute, steadied himself and then beat the advancing Bart Verbruggen with a clipped shot that bounced off the far post and away to safety.

But the best goalscorers have short memories. Palmer had the ball in the net barely a minute later from a virtually identical move, only for the assistant referee’s offside flag to be validated by a VAR check. Two minutes later Nicolas Jackson gave him his easiest chance of the game, taking out Verbruggen with a square pass that allowed him to slot into an empty net.

From there began the 20-minute stretch in which Palmer bent the action to his will, converting a typically nerveless penalty after Jadon Sancho had been brought down and then curling a sublime free-kick into the top corner from 25 yards. By the time he locked eyes with Sancho, darted diagonally onto the winger’s precise pass and lashed a shot in at the near post, even many of the Brighton fans were too awestruck to react.

It could have been even more. Palmer missed two great chances to add to his tally in the second half, while Jackson wasted several presentable opportunities to earn him assists. He will need to make do with just the 10(!) direct goal involvements from his first six Premier League appearances this season, and his reinforced status as Chelsea’s talisman.

Chelsea can’t keep getting dragged into basketball games

After a season in which so many matches descended into transitional chaos in Mauricio Pochettino’s tenure, it is nice to see Chelsea finally controlling games under Enzo Maresca. Rest assured, the sarcasm is light-hearted.

Chelsea are clearly struggling to maintain the kind of possession stranglehold on their opponents that Maresca is looking for, but these remain the early weeks of integrating a new style of play and there have been enough flashes of individual quality and collective coherence to be optimistic about the way things are going.

More significantly, it is almost impossible to imagine any team managing to control a game when the opposition sets up as Brighton did at the direction of Fabian Hurzeler here: a five, sometimes six-man pressing unit to harass Chelsea in their own defensive third and a four-man defence stationed permanently on the halfway line.

Brighton’s approach entirely dictated the terms of engagement in a ludicrously open first half. Twice their suffocating pressure yielded Chelsea mistakes that led to goals, but almost every time the home side managed to play through or around the visiting swarm they almost immediately found themselves clean through on goal, often in numbers.

Chelsea experienced something similar away at Tottenham last season, though Ange Postecoglou’s insistence on having his nine men play an offside trap on the halfway line transformed that game into something even weirder. Pochettino had to patiently guide his young players to the right answers that day. No such hand-holding was required this time around.

Nicolas Jackson, Noni Madueke and Palmer generally timed their runs in behind the Brighton defence well — even the offside calls were close — and the passes seeking them out were quick and accurate. When they bore down on Bart Verbruggen they were not especially clinical, but clinical enough to expose the folly of Hurzeler’s strategy.

In the long term, Maresca does not want to see his team regularly dragged into the football equivalent of a basketball game. But in this early stage of the season maintaining momentum is paramount and against a team as chaotic as Brighton, a win secured by superior firepower is sometimes the best-case scenario.

Sanchez errors crank up the pressure

Three minutes into added time at the end of the first half, an unexpected cheer went up in the Matthew Harding Stand. Having taken a few moments to consider his options, Robert Sanchez had decided to go long from his goal kick and the relief of that alone was too much for the Chelsea supporters behind him to hold in.

Sanchez has been on a run of improved performances recently, but the goalkeeping game is brutal. Mistakes linger far longer in the collective memory than saves or calm passes under pressure, and Sanchez’s biggest flaw has always been his consistency — at times technical, at times psychological.

His first error against Brighton compounded several others that had preceded it.

Moises Caicedo played Levi Colwill into trouble in his own box, and the centre-back’s attempted clearance was then deflected up in the air by Carlos Baleba. At that moment Chelsea’s giant goalkeeper saw Georginio Rutter towering over Marc Cucurella and made the costly decision to come for a ball he could never claim.

His second was far worse, and more in line with the others that have undermined Chelsea supporters’ faith in him: a loose first-time pass into a dangerous central area, pounced upon by Baleba ahead of Caicedo and immediately turned into an infuriatingly easy goal.

Sanchez has the faith of Maresca, and summer signing Filip Jorgensen has not done much in his outings to suggest he should play instead, but Chelsea have two goalkeepers who expect to be first choice in the long term. That means weekly pressure, and it will only grow with every error that Sanchez makes.