Frank Lampard slams Chelsea's 'fighting and running' in Brighton defeat

Chelsea caretaker manager Frank Lampard called his team’s performance ‘disappointing on every level’ following their Premier League defeat at home to Brighton on Saturday.

Conor Gallagher gave the struggling Blues an early lead, but the visiting Seagulls dominated the ball and created vastly more chances over the 90 minutes. Goals either side of half-time from Danny Welbeck and Julio Enciso secured a 2-1 win for them.

The result fired Brighton to within four points of fifth place Tottenham with two games in hand. But Chelsea continue to languish in the bottom half of the table, closer to the relegation zone than the top four. As it stands, they will match their lowly 11th place finish from 1995/96, long before billions were invested into the club, and finish outside the top half for the first time in 27 years.

“The better team won and could have won by more. They played like a team. They’re working together for a long time, give that credit,” Lampard told Sky Sports.

“But it’s not good enough from our point of view. All the basic parts of football – to fight, to run, and those things – we were short on. We have to dig ourselves out of that very quickly.

“We’ve got a big game on Tuesday. There’s no point in being too down, but professionally we have to understand why today went the way it did. And it wasn’t good for us.”

That game on Tuesday is against Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge, with Chelsea needing to overturn a 2-0 aggregate deficit against the reigning European champions.