Hato was making his first appearance for Chelsea at Stamford Bridge since joining from Ajax in the summer, lining up at centre-back alongside Trevoh Chalobah, and things initially went well for him and the Blues.

We went into the half-time break with the lead and looked comfortably in control. However, Chalobah’s sending off for denying Diego Gomez a goalscoring opportunity changed the game, allowing Brighton the chance to fight back and win 3-1.

Reflecting on a difficult home debut, Hato’s disappointment at our inability to turn a promising first-half performance into three points at the final whistle was clear.

‘I would say the first half was good from our side,’ said the 19-year-old. ‘We had a lot of possession, we created chances, we scored to make it 1-0 as well. We were playing well and scored a good goal.

‘In the second half, after 10 minutes we got a red card and went down to 10 men. After that we knew it was going to be a difficult game, but all I can say is that this loss is very disappointing.’

It is the second week in a row that the Blues have been reduced to 10 men in the Premier League, after Robert Sanchez was sent off early in last Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Manchester United at Old Trafford.

Regardless of the difficulty of our numerical disadvantage against Brighton, though, Hato feels Chelsea could have done better in preventing the visitors' goals on this occasion.

‘Of course in the last game against Man United in the first half we also had a red card and now it happened again,’ he continued.

‘You can see it just affects the game, when we are down to 10 men against 11, and we did it for nearly 40 minutes yesterday. You can see it’s very difficult.

‘We knew of course they would be playing on the sides and coming in with crosses. I think we could have done better, for sure.

‘We’re very disappointed because we knew it would be difficult, but I think we didn’t give a lot of chances away before their equaliser. So, as I said, we’re very disappointed.’