Brighton 1-0 Spurs: Albion win at the Amex for first time in 225 days
Ladies and gentlemen, the streak is over. 225 days after their last Premier League victory at the Amex, Brighton finally ended a club-record run of 14 matches without a home win by beating Spurs 1-0 with what was the best performance the Albion have given this season.
Ending such a barren sequence against one of the big six was typical Brighton stuff. Since defeating Arsenal 2-1 seven long months ago, the Albion have failed to beat Newcastle United, West Bromwich Albion, Burnley, Southampton, 10 man Sheffield United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Fulham at the Amex.
Never mind that bunch of also rans; send 2019 Champions League runners up Tottenham Hotspur and their collection of players who topped the Premier League as recently as November to Sussex and we will put to bed the worst run of home results in Brighton history against them.
Whilst the Albion were ending a piece of unwanted club history, Jose Mourinho was setting some. Never before in the managerial career of The Special One had he lost three consecutive matches away from home against an opponent.
Barcelona could not do it. Atletico Madrid could not do it. AC Milan could not do it. Juventus could not do it. Liverpool haven’t done it. Manchester City haven’t done it.
Only Brighton, with Mourinho’s latest miserable experience in Sussex following on from the 3-2 and 1-0 defeats he suffered at the hands of Chris Hughton’s Seagulls in the space of three months in 2018 as Manchester United manager.
Not since Queen Victoria, who despised Brighton so much that she tried to sell the Royal Pavilion in 1845, has there been a person who has hated visiting the city as much as Mourinho.
Can we play you every week would have been the wholly justified chant if supporters were allowed in to watch this latest instalment of misery inflicted on Mourinho in Good Old Sussex By The Sea.
We should forget playing Spurs or Mourinho on a more regular basis – if Brighton played this well every week then it would not matter who the opponents were.
It was an evening when everything came together for Graham Potter, result matching a performance in which every Albion player was excellent and there was no need for anyone to mention xG, thank God.
For the second game running, Potter named the same starting XI. Not only that, but it was the side that many would consider the best available to him.
Somebody must have confiscated his Team Selection Roulette Wheel at the same time as they presented him with an elderly lady’s scarf to wear alongside his latest smart jacket, which seems to have been bought as part of the Debenhams clearance sale.
It cannot be coincidence that the Brighton boss finally putting his strongest team out and offering some consistency in selection has led to two excellent showings in the 0-0 draw with Fulham and the 1-0 win against Spurs.
The Albion did everything but put the ball in the back of the net against the Cottagers on Wednesday night. When Ben White, Neal Maupay, Alexis Mac Allister and Pascal Gross combined for Gross to rattle the woodwork after just three minutes against Spurs, Brighton fans could have been forgiven for thinking this was going to be an all too familiar experience of chances squandered proving costly.
And then something very strange happened. An Albion player actually placed a shot into the corner of the goal. Leandro Trossard was the man who realised that if you do a radical thing like try and steer the ball out of reach of the goalkeeper, then you stand more chance of scoring. The result was an effort cushioned into the bottom left corner of the net which gave Hugo Lloris no chance.
Trossard’s goal came as the result of a wonderful move which sliced through the Spurs defence. Gross started it from out on the right when he found Mac Allister in space in the middle of the park.
The Argentinian play maker threaded a perfectly weighted through ball back to Gross, who drifted past Japhet Tanganga to latch onto the pass and play a low first time cross straight into the path of Trossard to caress into the corner. Brighton 1-0 Spurs and The Special One was turning into the grumpy one.
Mourinho’s mood was not improved as Brighton were completely dominant for the remainder of the first half, thanks largely to the efforts of the outstanding Mac Allister and Gross.
Spurs did not know what to do whenever Mac Allister was on the ball. He would glide this way and that, pop up in spaces which nobody else could find and hardly wasted a pass.
A year after he first arrived in England and it feels like we are starting to see the emergence of a superstar in much the same way that it took Yves Bissouma a while to establish himself in the Premier League.
Gross’ quality has never been in doubt, unless you are one of those weirdos who call him a sEt pIeCE meRcHAnt. He must have fooled at least half of the Spurs team with his Cruyff Turn Gross Turn, a piece of art so beautiful that if Claude Monet painted it, it would be worth £327 million.
As for Gross’ assist record, in teeing up Trossard for the winner in Brighton 1-0 Spurs, he claimed his 18th assist in the Premier League. The only Germans with more are Mesut Ozil, Leroy Sane and Dietmar Hamann.
Despite being by far the better side, clear cut chances proved hard to come by. Lewis Dunk saw a powerful header from a pinpoint Gross corner headed cleared off the line by Gareth Bale and Trossard tricked his way into the area but Maupay could not get a shot away.
The concern at half time was that there was no way Spurs could be as poor in the second half as they had been in the first. Combine that with Brighton’s notoriety for having a funny five minutes when they switch off and there were more than a few Albion supporters wondering if we would live to regret not getting an all important second goal.
It came as a bit of shock then that Spurs were only marginally better. There was no backlash from a Mourinho roasting and their switch to a back four made little difference as Brighton continued to dominate. White went close with a deflected effort which Lloris produced a smart reaction save from and Maupay put a header from Solly March cross off target.
Mourinho hauled Bale after 61 minutes of such ineffectiveness that it would have made Jurgen Locadia blush. Potter turned to his bench shortly after and having seemingly found his Team Selection Roulette Wheel, he withdrew right wing back Joel Veltman and chucked on centre back Dan Burn.
That led to a game of positional musical chairs with White switching to right wing back, Adam Webster moving across to become the right sided centre back and Burn taking over on the left of Dunk.
Such unnecessary upheaval unsurprisingly led the Albion defence to wobble for the first and only time. Within three minutes of the adjustments, Robert Sanchez had to make two of his three saves.
The first was a routine catch of a looping effort. The second was an outrageous stop at full stretch to turn a Carlos Vinícius snapshot around the post.
Without that piece of inspired shot stopping , we would be sitting here talking about a 15th home game without a win rather than Brighton beating Spurs 1-0.
It was an unreal bit of goalkeeping from a man who has five clean sheets in 10 Premier League career appearances. Whether you agree or not with Potter’s treatment of Maty Ryan, there is denying that Brighton have looked a much better team defensively since Sanchez was handed the number one position.
If you do not concede, you cannot lose and that mantra is particularly important for a side who squander as many chances as Brighton have this season.
The defence eventually settled down and Brighton got back on the front foot. There was a glorious chance to wrap things up at the end when Gross escaped down the right and teed up substitute Aaron Connolly, whose casual effort with the entire goal to aim at allowed Toby Alderweireld to make a block.
Connolly was sporting a fresh bleach and haircut. If he has done that himself with home styling all the rage at the moment because of lockdown, then he should give some thought to becoming a full time barber as his hairdressing is better than his finishing was on this occasion.
There were still around 10 minutes remaining after Connolly’s miss. Spurs rarely threatened in that time though as they began to run out of ideas.
Nothing summed that up better than when Érik Lamela decided that the best thing to do with a free kick from 35 yards would be to shoot, as if he could strike a ball like Cristiano Ronaldo.
His bold distance attempt merely flew easily into the arms of Sanchez with Lamela gesticulating wildly at his teammates, as if it was not his fault for deciding to go for goal from an extravagant distance.
And that was that. The final whistle was met by an overwhelming feeling of relief more than anything else and you could tell how much it meant to the Brighton players who, in beating Spurs 1-0, had finally got that monkey of an Amex win off their backs.
The gap to the relegation zone is now seven points, although Fulham do have a game in hand against Burnley. Looking up the table, the Albion are now within three points of Wolves in 14th. Eyeing up a top 12 finish is a far cry from where we were four weeks ago when the bottom three were just a single point away.
Which is the beauty of being a Brighton fan. It is why you can be raging at the manager and players for scraping a 1-1 home draw with 10 man Sheffield United and then six weeks later find yourself celebrating the Albion outplaying Mourinho’s Spurs.
Going from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again in double-quick time has always been the Brighton way and it always will be. It is what makes being an Albion supporter so much fun, because you never know what will happen next.
Win at Anfield on Wednesday and then lose to Burnley next weekend? Probably. It would be typical Brighton, after all.
