57 minutes into Chelsea's 2-1 loss to Brighton, Frank Lampard had seen enough. His Blues team had been battered by Roberto De Zerbi's Seagulls and were lucky to be in the game. Conor Gallagher's deflected shot had given them the lead before Danny Welbeck equalised.
Before Julio Enciso fired the away side deservedly in front at Stamford Bridge, Lampard turned to his bench to try and get some form of grip on the game. At the hour mark the visitors had registered 19 shots to Chelsea's three, played over two times as many passes and took nearly twice as many touches.
Chelsea had tested Robert Sanchez just once whereas Kepa had been called upon eight times. It was perhaps the most dominant an away team had been at SW6 since January 2020 when Lampard's Chelsea were played off the park by Manchester City. That defeat all but cost him the job first time.
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This time round there will be no such consequence, even for a performance as tepid as any this season from the Blues. The moment that Lampard's patience, or lack thereof, wore too thin to continue, came just before the hour mark and involved a quadruple substitution.
He made six changes from the midweek defeat to Real Madrid, including resting N'Golo Kante, Thiago Silva and giving Reece James some time off from the get-go. Kai Havertz also missed the game with injury whilst Noni Madueke was amongst those not in the squad.
With the game at 1-1, Lampard tried to change things up to stem the flow of Brighton attacks and summoned James, Mateo Kovacic, Hakim Ziyech and Joao Felix from the sidelines.
Enzo Fernandez, likely being spared for the Champions League second leg on Tuesday, went off, as did Wesley Fofana, Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic. Quite the assortment of talent being shifted and it comes in at a price of £281.5m for all those involved.
Considering James and Felix have no transfer fee in that group, nearly £300m worth of expenditure on six players being moved is now being labelled as the most expensive substitution of all time.
In a game that offered very little positivity for Chelsea, the sheer cost of their players weighed up with the performances on the field this season summed up exactly where things have been going wrong at the club in just one decision (or four, if you like) for Lampard.
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