Chelsea haven’t won a point, or even scored a goal, in their last five Premier League games. Following their 3-0 humbling at Brighton on Tuesday, Liam Rosenior refused to let his players off the hook.
Five games, zero points and zero goals. That’s the run of form that Chelsea have now endured following their latest Premier League defeat, a 3-0 submission against Brighton & Hove Albion on Tuesday night.
That loss has allowed Brighton to leapfrog Chelsea in the Premier League table in the race to secure European football next season. The almighty collapse by Liam Rosenior’s players in the last six weeks has been alarming.
The decision to replace Enzo Maresca in January looked like it might potentially pay off when Chelsea secured seven wins in their first nine competitive games under Rosenior, only losing in both legs of the League Cup semi-final against a strong Arsenal side.
The season had started so well for Chelsea and Maresca, too. Following somewhat unexpected FIFA Club World Cup glory in the summer, the London side were in second place after 12 matchdays and just six points off leaders Arsenal.
The Italian boss was quick to temper expectations ahead of their next game, a clash with the Gunners that could have taken them to within three points of the table-toppers.
“It’s too early in any case if we win or don’t win [against Arsenal],” said Maresca of his side’s credentials for the Premier League title. “It’s November, there’s five or six months to go.
“It’s important where we are [in the table] in February and March and we’ll see if we can achieve something important.”
Maresca didn’t get to see where his team were in February or March, and although they were certainly out of the conversation for the Premier League title, they were well-placed for Champions League qualification.
When they comfortably beat Aston Villa 4-1 away from home on 4 March thanks to a João Pedro hat-trick, Chelsea sat fifth on 48 points, just three off both Manchester United in third and Villa in fourth.
But since then, their form has fallen off a cliff, losing five successive Premier League matches for the first time since November 1993. It’s the first time they have lost five successive league matches without scoring in 114 years, last doing so in November 1912.
Since the first game in this terrible run of league form – a 1-0 defeat at home to Newcastle on 14 March – Chelsea have averaged the third-lowest xG per game (1.08) behind only relegated Wolves (0.83) and soon-to-be-relegated Burnley (0.97). Fifteen different Chelsea players have attempted a shot at goal in this run; none have been successful.
Chelsea’s opponents have outperformed the Blues on xG by 7.3 to 5.4, a much closer gap than the -11 goal difference in reality, but still the first time that Chelsea have had a negative xG difference over a five-game period since the early days of Rosenior’s reign – which cannot all be attributed to games that he was in charge of.
In that period, they also suffered a demoralising 8-2 aggregate defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in the UEFA Champions League last 16, with their only positive results coming in FA Cup wins over lower-league opposition in the form of Wrexham and Port Vale to progress to the semi-finals.
That run of league form has seen them drop to seventh, but most concerningly, only two points from the bottom half of the table.
Fingers have been pointed at Chelsea for their perceived lack of work rate, something Rosenior even touched upon in his post-match press conference after the Brighton defeat.
Rosenior questioned his player’s desire after the full-time whistle on Tuesday night. “It was unacceptable in every aspect of the game, unacceptable in our attitude. I keep coming out and defending the players – that’s indefensible, that performance tonight,” he said.He added, “I think the players need to have a look in the mirror for what they put in. You can talk about tactics… tactics come after the basics.
“Having more courage to play, winning duels, winning headers, tackles, conceding terrible goals. That was an unacceptable performance tonight.”
The Brighton defeat followed an alarming trend this season. Chelsea have now been outrun by their opponents in all 34 of their Premier League matches. That’s more than any other side in the division, with Liverpool (29) the only other club to have run less distance than their opponents in more than 25 of their matches.
There are factors that need to be mentioned here. Chelsea have been given a red card in seven of their Premier League matches this season (though in one of those games, at Manchester United in September, their opponents went down to 10 men 40 minutes later.
The Blues also often have possession of the ball more than their opponents, doing so in all but six of their matches in 2025-26. One of the games they didn’t was last night against Brighton (47%), where the home side’s players ran 8.0km more than Chelsea’s across the match.
Running less than your opponents certainly doesn’t make you a bad team. It also doesn’t exactly mean you aren’t putting effort in either, but Chelsea’s distance covered figures are alarming, especially when compared to other clubs.
On average this season, Chelsea have been outrun by their opponents by 5.2km per game – the worst rate in the division ahead of Liverpool (3.7km). At the other end of the table in first and second place are Arsenal (+4.4km) and Manchester City (+3.6km) – the two best teams in the league this season.
A stick often used to beat Chelsea with is their inexperience, but despite having the youngest team in the Premier League this season, with an average starting XI age of just 24 years,195 days old, many of their young squad have decent experience at the top level.
Their starting XI on Tuesday night was the 44th youngest in the Premier League this season (out of 660) at just 24 years, 288 days old, but eight of their starting lineup have made at least 100 appearances across European top-flight leagues, with only Jorel Hato (94), Liam Delap (64) and Roméo Lavia (57) not yet hitting that threshold.
Of course, Rosenior is relatively inexperienced too, being thrown into the Chelsea job having taken charge of just 51 Ligue 1 games at Strasbourg beforehand. But that can’t be used as an excuse for their downturn in form, especially when three of those five defeats have come against teams placed below them in the table coming into the game.
Chelsea will need to find a way to recover ahead of this weekend’s trip to Wembley to face Leeds United in the FA Cup semi-finals. The expected return of key players in Cole Palmer and João Pedro should help them, but it’s now a clash that could make or break their season.
The Blues are hoping to both set up their first FA Cup final appearance in four years and kickstart their form to rescue their league season and qualify for European competition. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about for Rosenior.
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