Newcastle 0-3 Brighton: Lamptey the star in a brilliant Albion performance

Tariq Lamptey was the name on everyone’s lips after Brighton & Hove Albion’s 0-3 win at Newcastle United – and rightly so. The teenage right back gave one of the best individual performances that we have seen from an Albion player, on a par with when Vicente would rock up and single handedly destroy the hopes and dreams of 11 opposition players.

But there was much more to Brighton’s success on Tyneside than just Lamptey. This was an excellent team showing which delivered the best 90 minutes of the Graham Potter era so far.

The Toon Army are no pushovers, on paper at least. Steve Bruce has recruited well and they should be eyeing a top 10 place this season. To go to Newcastle and win 0-3 is an extraordinary result for Brighton.

The challenge now is proving it is not a one-off. Potter’s Albion delivered similar eye catching scorelines last season when beating Watford 3-0 on the opening day and hammering Champions League runners up Tottenham Hotspur by the same outcome.

Those results were never really backed up over the next few weeks. Following the Watford success, Brighton had to wait two months to taste victory again, against Spurs at the start of October.

It took another two months for a performance of similar quality to arrive, the 2-1 win away at Arsenal in December. Nobody needs reminding what happened after that; one in in 18 games before lockdown which dragged Brighton into the relegation battle.

If we are to enjoy a season which does not involve carrying out complex mathematical equations every week to assess the permutations and the points gap between the Albion and the bottom three, then Brighton need to play as they did at St James’ Park on a much more consistent basis.

What might help with that is a more settled team. It is hard to get a run going when the formation and personnel is chopping and changing on a weekly basis, as was the case last season.

At times, Potter seemed to be selecting his side by picking a player’s name out of a velvet bag and spinning a roulette wheel to see in which position they would play.

Not at St James’ Park. Potter stuck with the 3-4-1-2 that had given Chelsea real fright six days earlier and only made one change, Aaron Connolly replacing Adam Lallana who had limped off in the 3-1 defeat against the Blues before half time.

Newcastle had no answer to Brighton’s formation in the first half, nor could they find a way to stop Lamptey. Within three minutes, Lamptey had gone charging into the Newcastle box where Allan Saint-Maximinin tripped him to concede a penalty.

Neal Maupay stepped up and smashed the kick down the middle to make it 1-0 and banish some of the memories of his two previous penalty misses.

Lamptey was involved again when the Albion added a second three minutes later, slipping Leandro Trossard away down the right. Trossard’s low cross was flicked home by Maupay.

The linesman’s flag went up against Maupay, who had started the move in an offside position. VAR took a look and decided that he was onside when Trossard delivered and so the on-pitch officials were overruled and the goal stood. We always said VAR was a great thing for the game…

Newcastle decided at this point that their best bet of stopping Lamptey from causing chaos down the flank was to try and injure him. Jonjo Shelvey and Jamal Lewis both entered the book for crude challenges. It was the ultimate complement to Lamptey that players of their ilk were resorting to kicking lumps out of him.

Nothing summed up Lamptey’s first half better than when he was making a brilliant challenge on £20 million man Callum Wilson to prevent the new Newcastle forward getting a shot on Maty Ryan’s goal, followed by Lamptey popping up at the other end end to draw a great save from the legs of Karl Darlow.

Lamptey is a player who can defend as well as he can attack. The speed and ease with which he can cover the length of a football pitch is frightening.

At one point in the first half, Lamptey was clocked sprinting at 21 mph. At that speed, he could get from Brighton to Portsmouth in two hours. He is only six mph off how quickly Usain Bolt runs.

Until we are allowed back into stadiums, we will probably never appreciate just how quick Lamptey is. And if he carries on playing the way he is and the gates of the Amex remain locked for this season, we may never seen him live as one of the big boys will surely be paying £60 million to £70 million for him next summer.

Newcastle hauled Saint-Maximin at half time in favour of bolstering their midfield with Miguel Almiron. That allowed them to compete a little more in an area in which Steve Alzate and Yves Bissouma had been completely dominant, two more young players giving outstanding performances in a side with an average age of only 23.

Lamptey was removed just before the hour mark, a shrewd move from Potter to protect his star player from having his ankles take any more whacks from Newcastle players who could not get close to him.

On came Big Dan Burn with Potter switching to 4-4-2. Interestingly, it was Ben White who played at right back with Lewis Dunk and Adam Webster in the middle and Burn on the left.

Given Newcastle’s struggles against 3-4-1-2, the hosts might have hoped that a 4-4-2 would be easier to play against. No chance; Brighton remained imperious in defence to the point where Maty Ryan could have spent the 90 minutes sat in his goal catching up on episodes of Home and Away on his iPad.

The post put in a strong claim to be Newcastle United’s man-of-the-match when it denied Connolly and Trossard before Brighton made it 0-3 six minutes before the end.

Connolly was the scorer and it was a stunning team goal which swept from back to front. Maupay played a crucial role, running at the home defence before feeding Connolly on the left who bent an effort past Darlow. The perfect goal to round off what might have been the perfect afternoon.

That it wasn’t quite perfect was because Brighton ended the game with 10 men, Yves Bissouma picking up a strange red card for kicking Jamal Lewis in the face.

Whilst it clearly was not intentional, if you are going to raise your boot to head height then you have to be sure to get it right, otherwise it risks straying into the category of dangerous and reckless play.

And that is how Kevin Friend viewed it after a cheeky look at the pitch side VAR monitor. We always said VAR was a bad thing for the game…

Lots of Albion fans were up in arms over the red card, but the test we always like to apply is imagining if the boot was on the other foot.

What if it had been Bissouma having to be substituted because Lewis had kicked him in the face? Even if it were accidental, most Brighton supporters would be screaming for a red card to be shown to Lewis. For that reason, Bissouma had to go.

He now faces a three match ban, a significant blow given that since the Premier League returned from lockdown, the Mali international has been one of the Albion’s better players.

There is a slight silver lining, however. The first of those games which Bissouma misses comes on Wednesday night at Preston North End in the third round of the Carabao Cup.

Should Brighton win that, then the third game of his ban will be against either Luton Town or Manchester United in the fourth round a week later.

If Potter takes the competition semi-seriously as we hope he does, then Bissouma will miss only one Premier League game. A good reason right there to stick with the second round policy of playing fringe players rather than the Under 12s.

Bissouma’s unfortunate red was the only blot on an excellent afternoon for the Albion. A young Brighton team blowing away a Newcastle side with top 10 ambitions 0-3 on their own patch is the sort of result that has made the rest of the league sit up and take notice.

If Potter and his players can deliver performances like this on a regular basis, then we could be in for an extremely memorable season. Just the small test of a club called Manchester United next…