Julio Enciso seals Brighton fightback to pile more misery on Chelsea

Brighton were brilliant. They were faster than Chelsea, stronger than Chelsea, slicker than Chelsea, more coherent than Chelsea and more inventive than Chelsea. They were almost embarrassingly the better side. As their pursuit of Europa League football goes on, so too does Chelsea’s bewildered misery. That’s 11 defeats in his last 12 games now for Frank Lampard as a manager and seven in his last 10 league games with Chelsea. And now he has to inspire a comeback from 2-0 down against Real Madrid. Good luck.

That it took until the 70th minute for Brighton to take the lead was down to Kepa Arrizabalaga making three outstanding saves, Evan Ferguson and Julio Enciso hitting the woodwork, Alexis Mac Allister being deadly only from the penalty spot and Danny Welbeck, with the entire goal to aim at, flashing an admittedly sharp rebound over. But their excellence did tell in the end with a stunning winner, Enciso wandering through Chelsea’s midfield before pinging a 25-yard strike into the top corner. The Paraguayan is 19 and cost £9.5m from the Asunción club Libertad. Brighton, masters of the cleverly sourced bargain, may have done it again.

Sometimes narratives clang together with a boom of inevitability. Brighton, having hammered Brentford yet only drawn, having been on the wrong end of four key VAR decisions at Tottenham last week, have recently developed a reputation as the unluckiest team in the Premier League. Conor Gallagher is the most Lampard-like player in the current Chelsea side, so when, a couple of minutes after Ferguson had hit the bar, a shot deflected off Lewis Dunk and looped past Robert Sánchez, it was always going to be from Gallagher.

Decisions continued to go against Brighton with Christian Pulisic