West Brom 1-0 Brighton: If you do not laugh, you will cry

Roll up, roll up, roll up for another instalment of the Brighton & Hove Albion Comedy Club. In this week’s show, Brighton missed two penalties in the space of an hour to lose 1-0 against a West Brom side who had won just once at home all season.

Aaron Connolly’s quest to have more haircuts than goals scored in the 2020-21 season continued as he fired over the bar from six yards out with an open goal to aim at. Neal Maupay found himself in a great position eight yards out and put his shot out for a throw.

And even referee Lee Mason got in on the fun, doing his best impression of one of the Chuckle Brother when disallowing a Lewis Dunk free kick, allowing it, then disallowing it again because he was not sure if he had blown his whistle or not.

After Monday night’s 2-1 defeat to Crystal Palace, it appeared as though the Albion had completed their bucket list of ridiculous ways to fail to win a game of football.

What could be more ludicrous than having 25 shots but still managing to lose 2-1 to a 94th minute goal from one of only two touches your arch rivals manage in the penalty area?

We found out at the Hawthorns. 70 percent possession, 15 shots, six on target and a referee who showed all the decisive of my missus when she is the homeware section of IKEA.

If you didn’t laugh, then you had to cry. Graham Potter looked like he wanted to do the latter after the game. It is a sign of just how stupid things have become when his unflustered demeanour is starting to crack as Brighton lurch from one debacle to another.

Potter said in his West Brom 1-0 Brighton post-match interview: “We only have ourselves to blame. We had other chances in open play as well as the two penalties, but it is very much a game that has got away from us and that’s very frustrating.”

For a man who has spent the past 18 months relentlessly telling Seagulls supporters that we should learn and take the positives even when there has been nothing positive to take, that came across as pretty damning criticism of his players.

Luckily for those players, Mr Mason’s farcical indecision from the Dunk free kick incident diverted a lot of attention away from how poor they had been over the rest of the 89 minutes.

Brighton were already 1-0 down and had missed their first spot kick by the time the referee took centre stage. The Seagull were woeful in the opening 20 minutes, appearing to suffer from some form of PTSD following the manner of that loss to Palace.

West Brom won three corners inside the opening 11 minutes. From the third of those, we were transported back to the bad old days of the first half of the season when the Albion could not defend set pieces for love nor money.

Conor Gallagher swung over a delivery which Kyle Bartley met inside the six yard box with a free header. No Brighton defender was close to Bartley and Big Bob Sanchez remained uncharacteristically rooted to his line as West Brom made it 1-0.

Given that Brighton had racked up 51 shots against Aston Villa and Palace and scored just once, falling behind was bad news. Mr Mason appeared to take pity on the Seagulls and their inability to find the back of the net when he presented a golden opportunity for a goal, awarding a soft penalty after Okay Yokuslu was harshly adjudged to have handled in the area.

Pascal Gross stepped up and the normally reliable playmaker crashed his effort against the bar. There must be something fundamentally wrong with Brighton & Hove Albion for the club to be able to take a German and turn him into a bad penalty taker.

Then came the Dunk free kick incident. In short, it went something like this: Dunk asks if he can take the free kick, Mr Mason blows his whistle to restart the game, Dunk takes the free kick, Mr Mason blows his whistle again a second before the ball crosses the line to stop play.

Dunk’s frustration stemmed from being told he was allowed to take a quick free kick, only for Mr Mason to effectively change his mind within seconds.

Had the referee looked up and realised Sam Johnstone in the West Brom goal was not ready before blowing the initial whistle, this whole debacle could have been avoided.

It was substandard refereeing of the sort you do not even see at Sunday League level; for it to be happening at the pinacle of the game was astonishing.

Making matters worse was Mr Mason’s inability to make a decision – when he is literally paid to make decisions. It is the equivalent of hiring a chef who cannot cook chicken.

The goal was disallowed. Brighton appealed and it stood. West Brom appealed and Mr Mason went and watched it back on the VAR screen. Sam Allardyce had a baffled look on his face as if he had just been told Chinese restaurants are no longer allowed to sell pints of wine. Potter wore a confused expression, seemingly having even less of a clue what was happening than the rest of us.

Dunk did not hold back in his assessment of Mr Mason when talking to Sky Sports afterwards, and he could be on the end of a hefty fine as a result.

“I said to the referee ‘Can I take it?’ He blew his whistle and I took it,” Dunk said. “Why doesn’t he come and speak to the press like me? Never. They hide behind their bubble.”

“I don’t think he knew what he was doing. He gave the goal. Why did he give it? I don’t know why VAR was getting involved. He lost control of the game. Fact.”

For most other teams in the Premier League, an incident such as that could easily be blamed for costing the game. Not Brighton though. If Mr Mason did give a post-match interview, he could have justifiably said: “Okay, I completely cocked up the free kick. But I gave you two penalties, you missed countless other chances and you conceded a cheap goal from a corner.”

Two of those countless other chances arrived deep in the first half. Johnstone pulled off a fine one-handed stop to deny the recalled Connolly.

Maupay then added to the comedy count with his shot from an excellent position inside the penalty area with just Johnstone to beat which somehow went out for a throw.

Remarkably, that was not the worse Brighton miss from open play of the 1-0 defeat to West Brom. Six minutes into the second half and Maupay forced Johnstone into another great save, the rebound falling straight to Connolly who now had the whole goal to aim at with Johnstone lying prone on the ground. Connolly fired over the bar, unable to find 192 square feet of empty net from six yards out. An incredible miss.

Connolly was hauled shortly after in favour of Danny Welbeck. Welbeck did not have to wait long to get involved in the action as Mr Mason awarded Brighton their second penalty of the afternoon after Gross was felled by Conor Townsend and the former-Arsenal man was charged with taking duties.

That was a curious decision in itself. Welbeck may be a centre forward, but according to Transfermarkt he has only taken one penalty outside of a shootout in his entire career, for the Gunners in a 3-1 Europa League win against AC Milan in March 2018.

Welbeck’s penalty taking skills would therefore not have been rusty; they are non-existent. His effort smacked the post and when he (unsuccessfully) tried to bundle home the rebound, it presented West Brom with a freekick as no Baggies player had touched the ball before Welbeck’s second attempt.

Embarrassingly, the Sky Sports commentators did not appear to know this pretty basic rule of football and instead began searching for an offside.

The worst thing about that second miss was that nobody was in the remotest bit surprised. How have we reached the point where Brighton can can become the first team in Premier League history to hit the woodwork from two penalties in a single game and not be shocked by it?

People said afterwards that Potter must have walked under several ladders to have this sort of bad luck. But missing penalties is not bad luck. A failure to score an unchallenged shot from 12 yards with only a goalkeeper to beat is a result of shit football, not misfortune.

Brighton could have carried on playing for another six hours after that Welbeck miss and they still would not have scored. Joel Veltman was denied by Johnstone and then went down in the box, sparking appeals for a third penalty of the afternoon. Thankfully, Mr Mason turned those down and saved us all from the embarrassment of another inevitable miss.

The manner of the 1-0 defeat to West Brom may have been extraordinary and to some Brighton fans, rather funny. We now appear to be at the stage whereby there is little point wasting anger and frustration on the Albion’s staggering inability to win games of football, just laugh instead.

What else can you do about a record over the past three games which now reads 60 shots, 20 on target, one goal, one point? And as we already said, if you do not laugh, you will have to cry – especially as the relegation zone creeps ever closer.

Not so long ago, Brighton were 10 points clear of the drop. A Fulham win in their game in hand reduces the gap to one. Brighton have failed to beat West Brom (twice), Fulham (twice), Burnley (twice), Palace (twice) and Sheffield United this season. With a record like that, it is a staggering we have not spent any time in the bottom three.

Brighton did not feel they needed to buy a new striker last summer, Potter said he was a good enough coach to coax more goals out of his existing forwards and now we are paying a heavy price for that.

Having said all that, would it not be typical Brighton to now go and beat Leicester City at the Amex? Or at least draw. Things cannot become any more comedic, can they?