Match Review: Brighton 2-0 Norwich City
What was the first thing you did on Sunday morning when you woke up? Over here at WeAreBrighton.com Towers, I was straight onto the BBC website to look at the Premier League table.
Sod talking to the girlfriend or going for a morning piss when Brighton are sitting pretty in eighth spot. Sixth position and a place in next season’s Europa League is just a point away. It’s a mere five points to Chelsea who occupy the final Champions League place. Dig out those passports, we’re all going on a European tour.
The Albion’s current lofty position in the table has got plenty of fans giddy with excitement. Not that we want to rain on anyone’s parade, but we’ve been here before – exactly two years ago in fact, something which everybody seems to have forgotten in the clamour to rewrite Chris Hughton as some sort of footballing dinosaur who was simply holding us back.
When Hughton’s Albion defeated Swansea City 1-0 at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday November 4th 2017, we also climbed into the dizzy heights of eighth in the table.
What followed was a devilishly tough run of fixtures over the course of the next seven weeks. By the time that Boxing Day rolled around, the Albion had won just once more from nine games having faced Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea – a stark reminder of how quickly things can change in a division as competitive as the Premier League.
Graham Potter now has to navigate a similarly tricky schedule. Manchester United, Leicester City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers are our next five games, all clubs who at the start of the campaign would have had genuine designs on a top four finish.
If we’re still in the top half of the table after that, then it might be worth looking at visa requirements for Azerbaijan, what the locals eat for dinner in Kazakhstan and how much vodka you can safely drink in Belarus before you die.
But right now, it’s a little too early to be getting carried away. After all, our five Premier League wins to date have come against an horrifically out-of-form Spurs, an Everton side who under Marco Silva have been as good at playing away from home as Boris Johnson and Watford and Norwich City who both look like relegation certainties.
Ah yes, Norwich City. They were the latest victims of the Potterball revolution as the Albion had an extremely comfortable 2-0 win against a Canaries side who on this basis will be heading back to the Championship come May.
It’s all a far cry from what BT Sports anchorman Jake Humphrey imagined for his beloved City when they won promotion at the end last season.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 48 hours, you can’t have missed the stick that he has copped for his ill-advised tweet sent last April after Brighton had bored their way to a point against Newcastle United in the ultimately successful quest to stay up.
The BT Sports presented posted “Having watched Brighton today, and I know I’m not impartial, but you really should be pleased about the prospect of an expansive, exciting, ambitious Norwich team full of home-grown talents joining the Premier League”.
Jake, Jake, Jake. Where do we begin? Expansive? Maty Ryan could have brought a chair onto the pitch, sat down and watched four episodes of Home and Away on catch up given that Norwich didn’t have a shot on target all afternoon.
Exciting? The game was as dull as dishwater in the first hour from both sides. Ambitious? Norwich did nothing with their 42% possession, save for hitting the bar in the first half.
And as for home-grown, five of the Albion’s 11 were English with Aaron Connolly and Steve Alzate having come through the development system. Norwich had two Englishmen in their side, two of whom were youth team products.
That starting line up for Brighton was the same that began the somewhat fortuitous victory over Everton, meaning that the previous week’s match winner Leandro Trossard was on the bench again. And once again it was he who would come on to win the game for the Albion.
There was very little to report in the first half, save for the stadium WiFi going down. Given that Profit Paul Barber is pressing ahead with his desire to make the Amex a cash-free stadium for next season and that scheme relies heavily on a good internet signal, we can’t wait for the opening home game of the 2020-21 campaign where nobody can buy any beer or £3.20 bags of Starburst because the WiFi isn’t working.
Misfiring even worse than the WiFi was Neal Maupay. The Albion’s record signing missed three chances in that opening 45 minutes which even Craig Davies would have put away and he was also the subject of a VAR check for a possible red card.
Not that anybody in the Amex knew this. For all we were told, the match officials might have held up the game to catch up on last week’s Strictly Come Dancing (Alex Scott looked fantastic) given that there was no information shown to those in the ground.
How hard can it be for the big screens inside stadiums to relay what is being checked? We can put a man on the moon and yet we can’t get a simple message onto a scoreboard that reads. “VAR Check – Possible Red Card”.
To his credit, Profit Paul has been very active in lobbying for more information to be given to ticket paying supporters inside of stadiums, rather than just those following at home on Twitter.
For a system that has so many flaws, this seems like one of the easiest issues for VAR to iron out. Hopefully, the confusion around the Amex about Trossard’s possible dismissal strengthens Barber’s case and he gets a fair hearing by the powers that be.
There were 59 minutes on the clock when Trossard entered proceedings and within nine minutes, he did what nobody in blue and white had managed for the previous 69 and put the ball in the back of the net.
It was a predators goal, highlighting another side of his game to go with the fancy footwork and the ability to glide past men as if they weren’t there.
Martin Montoya’s low cross from the right caused difficulty in the Norwich defence and Trossard stole in between Ben Godfrey and Tom Trybull to guide the ball past former Albion man Tim Krul in the visitors goal.
Krul had earlier received a warm welcome from the North Stand, a nice gesture for a man who was the ultimate professional during his one-season stay with the Albion as number two to Ryan.
Trossard turned provider for the Albion’s second, whipping in a dangerous free kick which his fellow substitute Shane Duffy stretched to divert into the back of the Norwich net.
That was Duffy’s sixth goal for the Albion in the Premier League; only Glenn Murray and Gross have more. It was also a timely reminder to Potter of the quality that the Irishman possesses following his fall from grace over the past few months.
Potter clearly favours Adam Webster because of his ability to step out of defence in possession. When Webster limped off in the first half which necessitated Duffy’s early introduction to the game, Lewis Dunk switched sides to take up Webster’s position as the left sided central defender with Duffy on the right.
From that point on, it was Dunk who was driving forward from defence – and he was outstanding. That meant that Duffy wasn’t required to do so much in possession, masking the fact that he may not be comfortable enough on the ball to fit in with the demands of Potterball.
Webster looks like he could be out for a few weeks at least, so it will be interesting to see what happens going forward.
Should it turn out to be a long-term injury and Potter still harbours doubts about Duffy, then the Albion do have a recall option on Ben White in January.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic to completely bugger up The Leeds United’s promotion bid by bringing their best player back to the Amex for the second half of the season?
There’s still a long way to go before January of course, as we’ve already eluded to when saying we shouldn’t be getting too carried away, especially with the quality of our next four opponents.
Manchester United away kicks off that run on Sunday. Never before have we gone into a game with United above then in the table. It’s a huge opportunity to win away at one of the big six for the first time.
But more importantly, it’s another test of how far we’re progressing under Potter. Exciting, isn’t it?
