Chelsea 1 Brighton 1
The mantra under Chris Hughton was ‘Stay in the game’ and, though Brighton play better football under his successor Graham Potter, that very much was the theme of our resilient draw at Stamford Bridge.
This was achieved with four key players not starting: Leandro Trossard, Lewis Dunk, Shane Duffy and Adam Webster.
The Seagulls went behind when Romolu Lukaku used his power and strength to shake off Neal Maupay – a lightweight v heavyweight contest – who was deputed to mark him at a corner.
Lukakau won the contest resoundingly to head home.
Brighton had an attacking spell at the end of the first half.
However it was in injury time in the second half that Danny Welbeck met Cucurella’ s cross to head home the equaliser.
Welbeck is a fine forward who leads the line but, because of injuries, cannot play the full complement of games per season.
There were some fine full backs on the pitch – Reece Smith, Azpicilcueta, Alonso and ex-Chelsea man Qadir Lamptrey – but Cucurella outshone them all.
Amazon was covering this one.
They used reliable BBC radio five commentator Connor MacNamara who had no difficulty in transitioning from radio to television.
They did not have a studio so Enuela Aloku and Gus Poyet stood by the pitch and came under fire.
My only beef was the positioning of subtitles obscured the team line-ups and what is the point of sub-titles?
So over the so-called festive period Brighton, with reduced player capacity, earned a most satisfactory 4 points from West London (Brentford and Chelsea).
