Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti admitted his side's humbling 3-0 defeat by Sunderland was the worst performance in his time at Stamford Bridge.

The Blues had their Premier League lead cut to two points by Arsenal as they lost a third league game this season.

"We have to meet about this on Thursday after the international break to look at what happened," said Ancelotti, who took over at Chelsea in June 2009.

"I think this was the worst performance since I've been here."

Chelsea were without John Terry, Frank Lampard and Michael Essien and were comfortably beaten courtesy of goals from Nedum Onuoha, Asamoah Gyan and Danny Welbeck.

"The performance was poor, but in football it can happen if you're not at your best and don't play with your best mentality," added Ancelotti.

"All the things were wrong. We didn't play how we wanted to, Sunderland showed fantastic spirit and played better.

"We were not able to come back into the game. It was a bad day. We were not able to play our football for 90 minutes, only 15 minutes in the first half."

The defeat was Chelsea's first at home in the league this season and followed a loss at Liverpool the previous Sunday and a 1-0 win over Fulham in midweek.

"We've lost two games in one week and it is not a good moment," said the Italian, whose side face a trip to Birmingham next Saturday.

"One month ago everything was OK. Now we are in difficulty but we have to move on quickly."

Ancelotti was sat next to Paul Clement in the dug-out following the club's controversial decision to relieve Ray Wilkins of his assistant manager duties.

Clement has been tipped to replace Wilkins but Ancelotti refused to confirm any appointment as he said: "We will take a decision about a replacement."

606: DEBATE Well done Sunderland...you humiliated us all over the pitch shedendfc

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce had seen his side humiliated 5-1 by arch-rivals Newcastle on 31 October, and Bruce said he was delighted with his players' response to the heavy defeat.

"I'll never get rid of it totally," said the Black Cats boss. "It's there on the CV.

"You're looking to try and respond and thankfully the players have done. They've rolled up their sleeves and turned it round."

He added: "It's not often you beat this lot 3-0 in their backyard. It won't happen very often again. We really took it to them.

"The players have been fantastic over the last two weeks and I'm very proud of the performance.

"People are so frightened coming here and no one wants to get humiliated, so we thought we'd give it a go.

"But you still need the players to perform, like Welbeck, at 19, who was terrific.

"All round, they all produced a fantastic performance. I hope people talk about Sunderland rather than Chelsea's poor performance. It's not a fluke."

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