As I was entering the ratings from this game into my trusty old Player Ratings spreadsheet, I noticed a pretty big error. I had not been including all the individual player ratings for the overall averages! The bottom five lines had gotten cut off at some point — as it turns out not only this season, but all of last season already.
Thankfully, recalculating the averages for last season did not change things measurably. The last five players (as ordered by squad number) were all youngsters who hardly
played anyway. But thanks to Alejandro Garnacho, that’s not the case this season. And by correctly recalculating the numbers, it turns out that our defeat against Brighton in Liam Rosenior’s final game in charge is fittingly now in fact the lowest ever in the history of our Player Ratings at 2.98 — the first and only time (so far) that we’ve dipped below 3.0 on the overall average. Yay?
This latest defeat wasn’t quite as bad as that, though we still didn’t quite manage to clear the 4.0 Hall of Shame threshold even with João Pedro’s and Jesse Derry’s decent ratings.
vs. NOTTINGHAM FOREST (PL, H, L 1-3)
EXCEPTIONAL (8.5-9.5): —
EXCELLENT (7.5-8.4): —
GOOD (6.5-7.4): João Pedro (6.7)
AVERAGE (5.5-6.4): Derry (6.0)
SUBPAR (4.5-5.4): Colwill (4.9, sub), Enzo (4.8), Jörgensen (4.5, sub)
BAD (3.5-4.4): Santos (4.3, sub), Sánchez (4.2), Caicedo (3.7)
TERRIBLE (2.5-3.4): Lavia (3.3), Cucurella (3.3), Palmer (3.2), Chalobah (3.2), Tosin (2.8), Delap (2.7, sub)
VERY MALO (1.0-2.4): Gusto (2.2)
OVERALL
THE HALL OF SHAME
So that’s now 15 entries in the Hall of Shame, over half of which (eight) have come in the BlueCo era, four in the last month and a half alone. And given our trajectory, it could yet get worse.
2.98 — Brighton & Hove Albion 3-0 Chelsea (2026.IV.21.)
The players are not fit to wear the shirt, said Liam Rosenior in his final post-match press conference. A coach not fit for the job, a squad not fit for the shirt, an ownership not fit for the club. Thanks to a calculation error, this was initially ranked in second place, but it’s now been placed in its rightful position.
3.02 — Manchester City 6-0 Chelsea (2019.II.10.)
For over seven years, it was tough to see Chelsea ever “topping” this performance. But BlueCo said, hold our beers. City’s finishing was more clinical in this game however than Brighton’s ever was, and as result, this remains our worst loss in over three decades. We were down three inside of 20 minutes, down four by half, and gave up two more in the second half for good measure. The nadir of Sarri-ball, or (almost) any ball.
3.36 — Brighton & Hove Albion 3-0 Chelsea (2025.II.14.)
Who let the record skip? The team showed no desire, said head coach Enzo Maresca, but our mentality was just one of the many aspects lacking in this one. In fact, we were found lacking in just about every aspect of the game, from attack to defense, from planning to focusing, from strategy to execution.
3.42 — Arsenal 5-0 Chelsea (2024.IV.23.)
“When we conceded the third goal the team gave up.”
-Mauricio Pochettino
3.43 — Everton 3-0 Chelsea (2026.III.22.)
The second of back-to-back 3-0 losses, and back-to-back Hall of Shame entries, and our third three-goal defeat in four games (all losses), conceding twelve goals in that span. Everton’s greatest margin of victory over Chelsea in the Premier League era. The only player showing any fight: 18-year-old Estêvão. Liam Rosenior: aging men and creating ifs. BlueCo masterplan: chef’s kiss.
3.62 — AFC Bournemouth 4-0 Chelsea (2019.I.30.)
This was the away game before the (aforementioned) City away game, and with Chelsea giving up four goals in the second half of this one and four goals in the first half of that one, we managed to lose 90 minutes of (away) football by a combined 8-0 scoreline. Now that is truly impressive!
3.69 — Newcastle United 3-0 Chelsea (2018.V.13.)
Antonio Conte’s last Premier League game in charge, which began with Chelsea holding a slim chance of qualifying for the Champions League (Liverpool won so it didn’t matter in the end), but ended up with yet another hilarious collapse. A week later, Chelsea beat Manchester United in the FA Cup final so yeah, good luck figuring out football.
3.70 — Chelsea 0-3 PSG (2026.III.17.)
Chelsea had lost this Champions League Round of 16 tie in the first leg already, so all we really wanted to see was some reasonable effort, a bit of quality entertainment, and some desire. We conceded twice in the first 15 minutes, and it only got more embarrassing from there. Not one player stood out; everyone was simply bad. Our worst home game*, and worst European match in WAGNH Player Ratings history.
*not counting the 4-2 home defeat against third division Bradford City in the 2014-15 FA Cup, which wasn’t televised
3.83 — Steaua Bucharest 1-0 Chelsea (2013.III.13.)
There were many lows of the (We’re-Just-Not-That-)Interim Blues, and this was certainly one of them. Chelsea came back to smash Steaua 3-1 in the second leg of the Europa League Round of 16 and would eventually go on to win the competition. In retrospect, viewed through the lens of recent seasons, it must be acknowledged that this interim era looks pretty okay.
3.95 — Chelsea 2-4 Wolverhampton Wanderers (2024.II.4.)
The second lowest rated game at Stamford Bridge in the history* of our WAGNH Community Player Ratings (*see Bradford City caveat above). That said, we would finish both this season (2023-24) and the following season (2024-25) strongly despite the springtime games that made this list. Can we do the same this season?
3.95 — Sheffield United 3-0 Chelsea (2020.VII.11.)
Outside of the first few minutes, Chelsea were never in this game, which was played in July in an empty stadium thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. What made the result even more shocking was Chelsea’s generally very good play and form during “Project Restart”. Like the current editions, this was a fairly young and inexperienced team, but with Frankie’s Fledglings we at least seemed to be on the right path for (re-)building towards a more positive future.
3.95 — Watford 4-1 Chelsea (2018.II.5.)
Conte lost 3-0 to Bournemouth in the game before this and asked the club for an official vote of confidence, which was then followed by an even worse performance as 10-man Chelsea were destroyed at Vicarage Road. In fairness, Chelsea, after falling behind, actually equalized in the final ten minutes despite playing a man down since the 30th (Tiémoué Bakayoko taking the ultimate prize with a 1.4 individual rating). But Watford took the lead again immediately after Hazard’s equalizer and the Blues folded from there.
Fun fact: Bakayoko’s rating stood for a long time as the lowest individual rating. It was “bettered” by Robert Sánchez’s 1.1 against Manchester United earlier this season (when he got himself sent off in the fith minute).
3.96 — Chelsea 1-3 Southampton (2015.X.3.)
The Mourinho Season was already in full swing by the time Sadio Mané inspired Saints to their first win at the Bridge in 13 years. Fun fact: this was Falcao’s one and only start in the Premier League (he would play just three more times for us that season for a grand total of 35 minutes, and we would lose all three games).
3.99 — Chelsea 0-2 Brentford (2023.IV.26.)
The worst of a most terrible season, the first of the post-Abramovich era. This was the fifth in a run of six successive defeats in all competitions as we wanted nothing more than for the season to end. We set quite a few new marks for futility in this season, and unfortunately, improvement on that has been marginal at best…
3.99 — Chelsea 1-3 Nottingham Forest (2026.V.4.)
The Force was not with us on this May the Fourth, and our rotten luck was compounded by some very poor individual performances, especially in the first 15 minutes. Overall, this game featured as many head injuries as total goals, so maybe we would’ve been better off just forfeiting. João Pedro did end our historic 566-minute Premier League goal drought with a spectacular bicycle kick, which really deserved better circumstances so that it could be properly appreciated.
