Match Review: Brighton 3-2 Everton

Football is a funny old game, isn’t it? In seven weeks out of nine so far in this Premier League season, we’ve come away from watching the Albion bemoaning the fact that we haven’t got the result that we deserved from some brave and bold performances.

And then along comes Everton at home. Brighton give arguably their worst display of the season and yet thanks to VAR giving a ridiculously soft penalty and the Toffees scoring a last minute own goal, win number three of the Graham Potter is on the board. Harsh on Everton, but maybe these things do even themselves out over the course of the season after all.

It’s about time we had some luck, and it wasn’t just in those two aforementioned incidents either. VAR picked up Michael Keane inadvertently stepping on Aaron Connolly in the box and gave a penalty, but it missed Martin Montoya wrestling Richarlison to the ground at the other end. If one is a spot kick, how can the other not be?

Then there was Pascal Gross’ opener. A well hit free kick yes, but it’s gone straight through a Sunday League standard wall and the hands of England’s number one goalkeeper.

That’s what made it so amusing to see so many Brighton fans going mad on Twitter at the coverage on Match of the Day on Saturday night (first on again, cheers Gary).

Jermaine Jenas had the nerve to suggest that all three of our goals were preventable from an Everton point of view. This was apparently a heinous crime, despite the fact that the first was quite plainly a goalkeeping error, the second would never have been a penalty without VAR and the third was an own goal.

VAR was of course the main talking point afterwards. The system was brought in under the guise of “correcting clear and obvious errors”, but that isn’t what it was used for on Saturday.

Virtually nobody who was actually inside the stadium saw Keane accidentally tread on Connolly, not least referee Andrew Madley.

Both were going for the ball and it was the sort of innocuous incident you see week-in, week-out. It’s part and parcel of football.

With the benefit of five different camera angles and a super slow-mo replay, you’ll notice infringements like it all over the pitch.

And if that’s how you want football games refereed than fair enough – but you may as well get rid of the three officials and have every moment of every game watched in slow motion by someone in a call centre in Uxbridge who subsequently feeds every decision that should be made back to the stadium where the match is taking place.

VAR is killing football and just because it’s worked in our favour this week, it doesn’t mean the system is a fantastic addition to the game.

After all, if the boot was on the other foot and it was Lewis Dunk conceding a penalty up the other end in identical circumstances, there would have been uproar.

And presumably all those Albion fans on social media advocating VAR for it spotting the foul on Connolly were also singing its praises from the rooftops after Dan Burn was caught a millimetre offside to rule out Leandro Trossard’s goal against West Ham United? No, thought not.

That we’ve had to divert nearly 400 words to VAR so far tells its own story too. This game may have been low on quality, but nobody could deny that by the end it was one of the most entertaining Premier League fixtures we’ve been involved in since winning promotion. And that should be the real story.

Every time one team scored, the other would go up the other end and do the same. Gross’ free kick was followed by Adam Webster getting the slightest of deflections to Richarlison’s goal bound header. It went down as an own goal, which seemed harsh on Webster.

The equaliser buoyed Everton on and they were the better side for the remaining 25 minutes of the first half. Marco Silva had clearly identified that Graham Potter’s 4-2-2-2 formation would leave plenty of space down the flanks for his side to exploit, and that left Montoya and Dan Burn struggling at times.

To his credit, Potter again showed his tactical flexibility by switching to 3-4-3 at the break. Not that this made much difference initially save for the outstanding Steve Alzate firing just over as Everton were still much the better side in the opening exchanged of the second half; in fact, it was only once the Albion manager turned to his bench with 66 minutes played that the tide began to turn.

It was at that point that Leandro Trossard and Ezequiel Schelotto entered the fray in place of Gross and Montoya – two notable substitutions for two different reasons.

Trossard’s return to action was much welcome. The Belgian winger had begun his Albion career in sparkling form before injury struck in September.

Seven weeks out doesn’t seem to have made much difference to him. Trossard was the best player on the pitch when he came on and every time he was on the ball, Everton as a collective unit soiled themselves.

The excitement he generates every time he gets on the ball is akin to Anthony Knockaert at the height of his powers in the Championship.

If Trossard can go onto have as big an impact as the Little French Magician did in the second tier, then we’ve got one hell of a player on our hands.

Schelotto’s first league appearance for the first team since the final day of the 2017-18 season meanwhile was a comeback the sort of which his doppelganger Jesus Christ used to specialise in.

The Argentinian full back was cast aside by Chris Hughton after he’d been torn apart by Wilfried Zaha in the 3-2 defeat at Crystal Palace in April 2018.

It was hardly a surprise; a manager like Hughton who valued defence over everything else was never likely to be overly fond of a right back who spent most of this time flying forward with his luscious long locks trailing in his wake.

Schelotto’s Albion career looked over when he joined Chievo on-loan in January. A cruciate knee ligament injury curtailed that spell in Italy but his luck changed when Hughton was sacked.

After nine long months of recovery, here he was back in a Brighton shirt, preferred on the bench to both Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Shane Duffy, who as we understand it was involved in a rather curious off-the-pitch incident last week.

It was one of Everton’s subs who sparked a mad final 10 minutes. Dominic Calvert-Lewin had only been on the pitch for 120 seconds when he latched onto Mason Holgate’s through ball to beat Maty Ryan and give the Toffees the lead.

Remarkably, sections of the Amex began emptying at that point. It’s been so long since we managed a meaningful goal in the final stages of a match that they probably thought they could make it home to admire Saffron Barker on Strictly Come Dancing without missing anything.

How wrong could they be? On 80 minutes, VAR gave Neal Maupay the chance to make it 2-2 from the spot which he duly took. Despite weekend accumulator tips backing Everton to win, with four minutes of added time about to expire the winner came for Brighton.

On another day, this was a passing move that would garner plenty of attention as the ball swept from Ryan at one end of the pitch and into the back of Pickford’s net at the other.

Yet because of the VAR controversy, the brilliance of Alzate’s back heel, Burn’s lung-bursting run, Dale Stephens perfectly weighted through ball and Trossard’s dangerous low cross being turned in by Lucas Digne has gone under the radar. Make no mistake, this was a team goal as good as any we’ll score this season.

It could only have been made better had Digne not been the man to knock it home. Glenn Murray was lurking just behind for what would have been a tap-in.

The Amex erupted and seconds later, the final whistle blew. Potter ran onto the pitch to celebrate in front of the North Stand like a man whose mate has just returned from the bar with a round of Jagerbombs. Schelotto cried. You love to see it, as the kids say these days.

Harsh on Everton? Definitely. Lucky Brighton? Potter said as much afterwards. But after so many matches in which we’ve been the better side and had nothing to show for it, we deserve something to finally go our way for once. Onwards and upwards.