Burnley 1-1 Brighton: Albion show another side to their game
Turf Moor might be I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here runner up Jordan North’s happy place, but it is rarely a kind mistress to visiting Premier League teams. Brighton could therefore be pleased with their afternoon work in coming away from Burnley with a 1-1 draw.
Not that every Albion fan saw it that way. Remarkably, there were a few who thought Brighton should be beating #TeamsLikeBurnley. Never mind that the Clarets have lost only one home game this season to opponents from outside the big six, a point at Burnley was apparently a poor result.
Well, bugger that. Drawing at Turf Moor was a fine way to round off what has been some week for the Albion. At 4pm last Saturday when Fulham were leading at West Bromwich Albion, Brighton were just two points above the bottom three. Fast forward seven days and the gap is now a very healthy 11.
What is most pleasing about this little run is that the seven points picked up in the past week have all been earned in different ways. Brighton have shown they now have more than one side to their game, a far cry from the side who did nothing but play possession football in the first few months of the season.
Last Sunday’s 1-0 win over Spurs was a result built on fast, incisive patterns of play and a positive approach. Victory at champions Liverpool came through a clever game plan, defensive discipline and knowing when to launch vicious counter attacks.
Against Burnley, Brighton had to dig in and battle. That they did that successfully against opponents who are the Premier League’s masters when it comes to attrition says much about the turnaround that the Albion have undergone since the start of the year.
This was exactly the sort game that Brighton would have lost pre-Christmas. When Wolverhampton Wanderers led 3-1 going into the interval at the Amex on January 2nd, many supporters were questioning whether this Albion squad had the necessary fight to get out of the relegation battle they found themselves in.
We now know the answer to that. Whatever was said over the half time oranges against Wolves that day had the desired effect and Brighton came back to draw 3-3.
Since then, the Albion have won two, drawn two and lost one of their five Premier League matches and progressed to the fifth round of the FA Cup.
A number of those games have been battles. Newport County and Blackpool both provided tricky lower league opposition in the FA Cup and The Leeds United away had the feel of a real man-the-trenches effort. Burnley 1-1 Brighton took it to another level though.
In a way, it was a bit like that John Travolta and Nicholas Cage film where they swap faces. Brighton are meant to be the side who play pretty attacking football and Burnley the fighters who rely on set pieces; and yet here we were with Lewis Dunk heading home a corner as the Albion had just two efforts on target whilst Burnley played some surprisingly attractive passing stuff and missed a glut of opportunities in registering an xG of over two.
Almost from the first whistle, Brighton looked like they were suffering from heavy legs, hardly a surprise after their exertions at Anfield and against Spurs.
Six games in 21 games has ironically come at a time when Potter has settled on his best team, meaning changes are no longer occurring at the same frequency as Katie Price rattles through husbands.
Aaron Connolly replaced Leandro Trossard, Alexis Mac Allister came in for Steve Alzate and Joel Veltman took over from the injured Solly March. Other than that, it was the same side who had produced heroics against Liverpool less than 72 hours earlier.
The first 30 minutes at Turf Moor was pretty much a non-event, so much so that most Brighton fans were more excited about goings on at Adams Park where Glenn Murray scored inside of 10 minutes on his Nottingham Forest debut from a Gaetan Bong assist.
Murray would go onto add a second half penalty and Anthony Knockaert a third as Chris Hughton’s side won 3-0 against Wycombe Wanderers. The band is well and truly back together at Nottingham & Hove Albion.
Whilst Murray was banging them in for fun in Buckinghamshire, Dunk was scoring a towering header which had all the trademarks of his former teammate to give Brighton the lead.
It came with 36 minutes played. Pascal Gross sent over an out-swinging corner and Dunk rose highest above James Tarkowski to power the ball between Nick Pope and a Burnley player guarding the post.
There was something rather wonderful about Brighton scoring from a set piece as Burnley had spent most of the first half trying to dive and cheat their way to corners and free kicks.
Prior to the goal, Robert Sanchez had turned a low free kick from Dwight McNeil around the post and produced a brilliant reaction save in a bit of melee from Tarkowski.
The hosts were their own worst enemy in front of goal at times, most notably when Ashley Barnes and Jack Cork put efforts from good positions miles over the crossbar with finishing that was more in keeping with the Six Nations.
That was not the only rugby-esque element of the home team’s performance. Their physicality at times overstepped the mark. Sanchez took a fair few whacks from Barnes, Neal Maupay was nearly cut in half by Ben Mee who earned an early booking for GBH, Matěj Vydra gave Dunk and Adam Webster a real test and Alexis Mac Allister was elbowed in the face in an incident that remarkably went unpunished.
Based on the 90 minutes of brutality witnessed in Burnley 1-1 Brighton followed by the 80 minutes England served up in defeat to Scotland at Twickenham, Eddie Jones should seriously consider selecting 15 players from Sean Dyche’s squad to take on Italy next week.
In the second half, Burnley mixed their thuggish approach with some good football which Brighton had no answer to. Pope had turned a Connolly effort around the post just before half time in what turned out to be the Albion’s last chance of the game as it was pretty much one way traffic after the interval.
The hosts equalised on 54 minutes when Sanchez parried an Erik Pieters shot straight back into the danger zone for Johann Berg Gudmundsson to fire home the rebound.
At Manchester City last month, Sanchez did the same when his failure to convincingly push a shot away from goal gave Phil Foden the winner. Nobody was willing to apportion blame for Gudmundsson’s goal on Sanchez and quite right too as without Big Bob’s countless other interventions, Brighton would not have been heading home from Burnley with a 1-1 draw.
Sanchez claimed every aerial ball that Burnley tossed into the box, relieving a lot of pressure on the overworked Dunk, Webster and Ben White. If you put Sanchez in a room of over 70s who had all been vaccinated, he would catch Covid-19.
He saved bravely a couple of times at the feet of Barnes and denied Vydra with a fine save from close range, arguably the best of the afternoon.
With Maty Ryan making seven saves and impressing on his Arsenal debut, this strange goalkeeper situation might actually work out well for all parties; Ryan is living the dream playing for the club he supported as a boy and Sanchez has conceded one goal in five games.
Everyone is happy – and if Sanchez can iron out this Wayne Henderson Syndrome which is the only chink we have seen in his goalkeeping armour so far, then he could go right to the very top.
Sanchez was not the only one putting his body on the line. Dunk put in a crucial block from Barnes and when the former Brighton striker did put the ball in the back of the net, it was ruled out for offside against Gudmundsson.
Potter tried several things to break Burnley’s dominance but none of them worked. A double change introduced Danny Welbeck and Trossard for Maupay and Connolly up top but the new-look strike force barely had a sniff.
The Brighton manager also switched to a flat back four and pushed Ben White into midfield in an attempt to outnumber Burnley in central areas.
That did not work either. White’s stint in the middle of the park came to a premature conclusion as he returned to the defence when Webster limped off 15 minutes before the end in the latest injury blow to the Albion.
By the time the final whistle blew, the Albion looked dead on their feet. Potter said afterwards that he felt many teams would have “gone under” in the face of such relentless Burnley pressure and he is right.
The Albion themselves would have lost such a game by two or three goals seven weeks ago – and that is why Burnley 1-1 Brighton was such a pleasing result.
Give me a point away from home when we do not play well over losing at home to Manchester United but everyone saying how pretty Brighton’s passing was and praising our expected goals.
Happy place, happy place, Turf Moor, Turf Moor.
