Southampton 1-2 Brighton: Albion lose on xG but win on actual goals

Ladies and gentleman, we are officially through the looking glass. A full time score at St Mary’s Stadium of Southampton 1-2 Brighton meant the Albion won a game of football on real goals which they should have lost according to xG.

What a time for it to happen. For 27 games, Graham Potter and his players have had praise heaped on them for their expected goals. Sadly, the Premier League have not been so impressed as to decide to give out bonus points for xG and so Brighton have been forced to collect them via the traditional means, namely scoring goals and winning points.

That is something that has happened far too rarely. Before making the 67 mile trip along the A27 and M27 for this ‘South Coast Derby’, the Albion had been victorious on just five occasions in the 2020-21 Premier League campaign. Only goal difference was keeping the xGulls out of the relegation zone.

As nice as pretty passing football and a wonderful xG is, at the business end of the season none of it matters. Brighton have to start winning, by hook or by crook.

The ball ricocheting in off Dan Burn’s ear in a game in which Brighton record 10 percent possession is a million times better than 70 percent possession, 30 shots on target and lots of positives for Potter to tell us all about.

That is what makes Southampton 1-2 Brighton feel so big. Southampton won 1.03 to 0.97 on xG. The Saints had 59 possession and led the shot count. And yet it was the Albion who picked up three deserved points in a pragmatic performance.

Brighton being better when they have less of the ball than their opponents is well documented. In 10 Premier League wins since the start of 2020, nine have been achieved in matches where the Albion have not dominated possession.

It seems curious that after each little run of positive results playing that way, Potter then reverts back to a possession-obsession approach.

The question now is will he stick with pragmatism for the final 11 games of the season? With Brighton’s top flight future still very much in the balance, he would be mad to not use what so clearly works best for this group of players. Then again, Potter does mad better than most…

Actually, we will take that back after Southampton 1-2 Brighton. After having his game management heavily criticised in last week’s 2-1 defeat to Leicester City, Potter made a set of crucial half time interventions at St Mary’s which helped turn the game in the Albion’s favour.

For the third week running, he opted to start with a back four and for the third week running, it did not really work. Dan Burn pulling up injured just before the interval gave Brighton a chance to change shape and Potter duly took it, switching to a back three of Lewis Dunk, Ben White and Joel Veltman.

Things got interesting with the identity of the two wing backs. Pascal Gross was on the right and Andi Zeqiri introduced on the left, two individuals playing very much out-of-position in a must-not-lose game. You had to wonder if Potter had been swigging cooking sherry straight from the bottle on the team bus.

It worked though. With 11 minutes of the second half, Leandro Trossard justified the decision to get him into a more central role by lashing home what proved to be the winner after a beautiful passing move through Adam Lallana and Danny Welbeck.

Trossard had an interesting afternoon. He spent much of the first half doing nothing other than wandering around looking like a vampire. Most Brighton fans wanted him hauled at the break but Potter kept the faith, knowing there is always a chance Trossard will conjure up a piece of magic. That he duly did.

Not that anybody could have predicted how ineffective the Belgian would be after a promising opening five minutes. Trossard had a shot blocked by Danny Welbeck of all people and then Jannik Vestergaard got in the way of the follow up.

Brighton’s opener arrived on 16 minutes from a Gross-Dunk set piece link up. Fraser Forster turned Neal Maupay’s shot around the post at full stretch after a delightful flick from Welbeck, giving Gross the chance to deliver a typically pinpoint corner onto the head of Dunk who powered home.

The goal moves Dunk onto four for the season, leaving him as second top scorer behind Maupay. If you take away the three penalties Maupay has scored, then Dunk is joint-top scorer from open player – which goes a long way towards explaining why Brighton are in such a precarious situation and why they have to sign a more clinical centre forward in the summer.

Should the Albion not improve their forward line, then perhaps Mark McGhee should get on the phone to Potter and tell him about the time he started playing Adam Virgo up front? Dunk as a striker… now there is a thought.

Whilst McGhee is on the blower to Potter, it might be helpful if he could also explain to the current Brighton boss how to hold onto a lead. McGhee’s Albion were never the best to watch, but they were always well organised. If they went 1-0 ahead, they knew how to see out a win.

Whenever the Brighton Class of 2021 score, once the euphoria of a rare goal has died down comes the dread that it will not be long until the opposition equalise.

In this case, it took just 11 minutes for the Saints to level. Stuart Armstrong whipped a cross in, Veltman was somehow outjumped by Ryan Bertrand and Dunk helped the ball straight into the path of Che Adams to volley in from close range.

Remarkably, there were some Albion fans who blamed Burn for the goal. Veltman lost a header to a man half his size, Dunk claimed an assist and yet Burn was the person copping abuse.

The agenda against Burn is very real and it surely cannot be long before Brighton supporters start pinning the assassination of John Lennon or the Great Depression of the 1930s on the giant defender.

Gross should have given the Albion the lead on the stroke of half time, only to produce an astonishing miss. Burn went rampaging forward – the action which stretched his hamstring too far and forced his withdrawal – slipping in the German playmaker whose weak effort found the feet of Forster for a classic Brighton xG miss.

Most people were still scratching their heads at Potter’s tactical tweaking when Trossard showed Gross how it was done. Veltman found Lallana who glided forward with the ball before spotting a gap through which to find Welbeck.

Dat Guy needed just one touch to open up the Saints defence with a layoff straight into the path of Trossard, who sent Forster the wrong way when in one-on-one to make it Southampton 1-2 Brighton.

The Albion now had over 30 minutes to hold on for a precious three points. As already noted, that is not something they have been particularly good at so far this season.

They needed Robert Sanchez on this occasion and he rose to the challenge in impressive style having been very much at fault for Leicester City’s winner at the Amex a week earlier.

How Sanchez bounced back from the first glaring error of his Premier League career would be telling; if his confidence was buggered, then the Albion faced a long run-in with no other goalkeeper with top flight experience on the books.

Sanchez’s excellent save from Adams midway through the second half was a good sign as he spread himself well to keep out a driven shot from close range.

Somehow, referee Stuart Attwell did not conclude that Adams getting a shot away counted as an advantage and so pulled the game back for a free kick from a been dangerous position in any game, let alone against somebody with the set piece prowess of James Ward-Prowse.

Brighton’s cunning plan for deal with Ward-Prowse was to have Trossard lie on the ground behind a six man wall, as if he were a man who has just asked his friends to hide him because his mental ex has just walked into the pub. Remarkably, this actually worked as Gross blocked the free kick at the expense of a corner.

Another surprisingly sensible substitution followed from Potter as Davy Propper was introduced in place of Welbeck to try and offer greater control in midfield.

The Albion dug in and for once, the lead was not surrendered, although there was one hairy moment as the game entered injury time when Lallana’s clearance went straight up into the air, Propper ran into the referee and there were half-hearted appeals for a Southampton penalty following a bit of clumsiness in the box.

Had that been given then it would have summed up Brighton’s season nicely. Remarkably, Mr Attwell was not interested and neither was VAR. The Albion survived and there was sheer relief at the full time whistle of three points well earned, a rarity given that trip to St Mary’s have not been kind to Brighton in recent years.

Before Southampton 1-2 Brighton, you had to go back over 11 years to find the last time an Albion team won away against the Saints, Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named marking his first game in the Seagulls dugout with a stunning 3-1 success in November 2009.

Lallana was in the Southampton line up that day. Dunk was the 17-year-old captain of the Albion’s Under 18s. Welbeck was about to leave Manchester United on-loan to join Preston North End. Trossard was a 15-year-old who presumably looked less like a vampire and Sanchez was a 13-year-old on the books of Levante.

Victory at St Mary’s has been a long time coming. Brighton winning a game which they lose on xG seems even stranger than three points against the Saints… through the looking glass and hopefully onto Premier League survival.