Rosenior sack surely imminent but Chelsea chiefs should follow him out of the door for £588.5m reasons

If Liam Rosenior was not doomed for the sack before the trip to Brighton (which he should have been), he surely will be now.

The loss to Brighton is Chelsea ‘s seventh in their last eight games, and this performance was comfortably the worst of this shambolic run.

It took 23 minutes for Chelsea to have their first touch inside Brighton’s box and 41 minutes to have their first shot in a first half of utter one-way traffic, with co-commentator Chris Sutton doing his ex-club a kindness by only describing their showing as “woeful” and “hopeless”.

Before the game, Rosenior was dealt the blow of losing Cole Palmer with a minor hamstring issue, with the England international joining fellow forwards Joao Pedro, Estevao and Jamie Gittens on the sidelines due to injury.

So, with Alejandro Garnacho being more useless than usual against Manchester United and Chelsea’s defensive fragility, Rosenior experimented with five at the back against Brighton and operated Enzo Fernandez (who was back as captain after his recent dismeneanors) in an advanced role just behind Liam Delap.

But it was clear from minute one that this system was not working, with Brighton having acres of space to penetrate Chelsea at will, and they took the lead after three minutes.

After Kaoru Mitoma stung the palms of Roberto Sanchez with an attempted repeat of his volleyed goal vs Spurs, Brighton opened the scoring from the subsequent corner, with Ferdi Kadioglu capitalising on typically weak defending from the visitors to score with a deflected shot.

And Chelsea’s response to going behind was embarrassing, with Rosenior’s desperately poor side carelessly giving away possession and being overpowered by Brighton’s intensity on endless occasions.

In complete contrast to Chelsea , Brighton headed into this game in a brilliant vein of form, and t hey have now leapfrogged tonight’s opponents to sit sixth in the Premier League.

Brighton’s high confidence was clear as they zipped the ball around sublimely and completely ate Chelsea alive, with Rosenior’s side fortunate that their opponents were guilty of overplaying in an opening half that could have easily finished with them four goals to the good.

At half-time, Rosenior introduced Garnacho for Wesley Fofana to switch back to a four-man defence, with this formation change coming around 45 minutes too late.

Garnacho was enthusiastic but wasteful as Chelsea were more comfortable in possession after Rosenior’s overdue change, but they were still no match for their superior opponents and it was only going to be a matter of time before they were picked off.

And Brighton’s second came after 56 minutes, with Georginio Rutter leading a breakaway before giving Jack Hinshelwood the easiest of tasks of finishing past Robert Sanchez from inside the penalty area. Danny Welbeck then netted his 13th goal of the season with a fine finish off the bench to make it 3-0.

Chelsea should count themselves lucky that they faced a pretty merciful Brighton side and that Sanchez made some decent saves, because on another night against a more clinical opponent, they would have been on the end of an embarrassing scoreline, and that would have been exactly what their performance deserved.

This was another low for Rosenior en route to him surely being put out of his misery at the end of this season (if not earlier), with Chelsea currently looking more likely to finish in the bottom half than to qualify for any European competition. Leeds United will rightly fancy beating them in their FA Cup semi-final, too.

It has come as no surprise to anyone that Rosenior, like Igor Tudor at Spurs, has been proven to be out of his depth at Chelsea and has been entirely consumed by the enormity of the job with so little experience.

He is not good enough for the job at this stage and will be gone soon, but co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart (plus other key decision-makers) need to be held accountable for appointing Rosenior and for their 23 other mistakes while running Chelsea.

Chelsea’s self-inflicted financial turmoil will only worsen if/when they miss out on Europe , with Rosenior only a small part of a broken football club that desperately needs a top-to-bottom revamp.

And perhaps nothing can illustrate how badly Chelsea have gone wrong than the fact that the dire starting XI picked to face Brighton cost a total of £588.5m. Sack Rosenior and the rest of them…