Chelsea, Brighton & Hove Albion hold behind closed doors friendly on free weekend

Neither Chelsea nor Brighton & Hove Albion have a game this weekend, Chelsea because of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral and Brighton because of a rail strike, so perhaps it’s only natural that given all the business that’s gone down between the two clubs recently, we would organize a behind-closed-doors friendly as well.

According to various reports, that’s precisely what had gone down earlier today (Saturday) at Brighton’s Amex Stadium, with mostly those players for Chelsea involved who did not play against RB Salzburg on Wednesday, as well as those who might not be going away on international duty for the next ten days.

The likes of Christian Pulisic, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Trevoh Chalobah, Armando Broja, Denis Zakaria, Conor Gallagher, and Carney Chukwuemeka thus got a runout, with the latter grabbing both goals in Chelsea’s 2-1 victory. Sadly, this being a closed-doors training exercise, we don’t have any video of the event, so we’ll have to keep waiting to see Chukwuemeka in action — hopefully not much longer now.

On the other side, Billy “this isn’t awkward at all” Gilmour featured for Brighton.