London [UK], December 4 : Following Chelsea's win over Brighton in the Premier League, manager Mauricio Pochettino said his side was competitive and deserved to win for the way they played with a player loss for more than an hour.
Enzo Fernandez scored two goals and the Blues overcame the absence of Conor Gallagher, who was sent off to score a 3-2 win over Brighton at Stamford Bridge.
Samuels (17th minute) and Samuels Colwill (21st minute) put Chelsea at an advantage but a goal from Facundo Buonanotte in the 43rd minute kept Brighton alive. Gallagher was shown a second yellow card for a foul around the half-time. But that did very little to dampen Chelsea's spirits. Fernandez converted a penalty in the 65th minute, which proved to be a match-winning goal.
"Overall game we deserved the victory because when you analyse the game I think we played the game in every single period that the game expected from us. We were very competitive, this is hard to win with one [player] less for more than 60 minutes. It was an important victory for us because after Newcastle we had to show a different face and I think the response was really good," said the Chelsea boss as quoted by Sky Sports.
"I told the players at half-time, this is a massive opportunity and challenge to show we are a real team. At the start of the second half, we dropped a little bit in the way we needed to play but with one less we needed to challenge a very good team in Brighton. We competed really well and we scored a good goal with one less."
"We need to use these types of victories to build our confidence, because that is massive for us to build our confidence. We are a young team and we are trying to play the way we want to," he concluded.
Brighton boss Roberto De Zerbi said to Sky Sports, "I think we played better than Chelsea, better than the last game in the Europa League, better than the Nottingham Forest game. But we made three big mistakes and we lost the game. We are very young but we are able to defend better in those situations. I am sorry because we deserved to make a point. I think one point, a draw, was not a very good result for us. You could imagine a defeat."
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