Lallana comments highlight Brighton mentality flaws
17 points dropped from winning positions. 17 goals conceded in the final 10 minutes of first and second halves. Adam Lallana questioning attitudes. It all adds up to one very concerning question – do Brighton have the mentality needed to avoid relegation from the Premier League?
Lallana appears to have his doubts. Speaking to Sky Sports after Daniel Amartey’s 87th minute winner gave Leicester City a 2-1 victory in a match which Brighton had dominated in the first half, the former-Liverpool playmaker gave a pretty honest appraisal of where things had gone wrong.
“Second half we were poor. It almost felt like we had won the game at half time. If you drop your levels you get punished. There have been games we’ve felt hard done by but today doesn’t feel like that. We didn’t perform well enough in the second half.”
“It’s always nice to go one up at home. We had a couple more chances. But you can’t rest on your laurels. We’ve proven we can get results against big teams. We all dropped off a couple of percent. We were too passive and we got punished.”
Brighton following up a good first half with a poor second half is nothing new. West Brom at home, Southampton at home, West Ham away, Burnley away and now Leicester at home.
Throwing away points has been a recurring theme too. If Brighton had managed to hold onto just half of the total they have lost, then eight extra points would put the Albion above Crystal Palace in the table.
As for goals in the last 10 minutes, the list of opponents who have profited from Brighton switching off before the full 45 has been completed is quite extensive.
Deep breath and here we go – Manchester United 43rd and 96th minutes; United again in the 80th minute of the Carabao Cup; Everton 45th minute; West Brom 83rd minute; Southampton 45th and 81st minutes; Leicester 41st and 44th minutes; West Ham 82nd minute; Wolves 44th minute; Newport County 96th minute; Manchester City 44th minute; Blackpool 45th minute; Leicester FA Cup 94th minute; Palace 93rd minute; Leicester again 86th minute.
If football matches were played over 70 minutes rather than 90, the Albion would have 15 more points and be sitting pretty in ninth spot, already beyond the magical 40 mark and within a victory of overtaking reigning champions Liverpool.
Graham Potter might like to take the positives and learn from every week, but it does not appear as though any learning has been done by Brighton with regards to seeing out games of football.
The same problem of switching off before the whistle blows has afflicted the Albion all season. Lallana saying “it felt like we had won the game at half time” is damning of the mentality of this Brighton squad and an attitude that you cannot get away with in the Premier League, not least in a relegation battle.
Perhaps the problem boils down to inexperience. Brighton have one of the youngest squads in the Premier League having opted to clear the decks of plenty of experience in the summer with the departures of Glenn Murray, Shane Duffy and Dale Stephens.
None of those would have expected to be first choice players this season, but the club still might have opted to keep one or two of them around to help the younger players.
The risk with going with such youthfulness throughout your squad is that you will get moments of naivety and costly mistakes at critical points.
Take the two most recent goals the Albion have conceded to lose games in the final five minutes. Amartey’s winner for the Foxes came because of a dreadful error from Robert Sanchez.
Christian Benteke’s 94th minute strike for Palace would never have happened if Ben White had let the ball run out of play, rather than aimlessly hoofing it up in the air to keep it in.
Two very costly mistakes from two young players who are still learning the Premier League ropes. You might be able to get away with such errors on loan in the Championship with The Leeds United or League One with Rochdale, but the top flight is a very different beast. Both White and Sanchez have discovered that the hard way.
Making such mistakes is part of the learning process – on an individual level at least. White has not made many errors and that was Sanchez’s first glaring cock up of the sort that all young goalkeepers suffer. Players can be excused such moments, providing it does not become a regular occurrence.
It is less easy to forgive a team consistently repeating the same errors, especially when the manager uses the term “learn” so much as to have turned it into a parody.
After the first couple of times Brighton conceded late goals, the players as a collective should have learned to stay switched on for the whole 45 minutes. When it has happened 10 times, it goes beyond inexperience or naivety.
For it to happen 17 times, then you have to start questioning character and mentality, as Lallana – the most experienced head in the Brighton squad – has now done.
What can Potter do about it? It is too late to bring in any more experience. In any case, the trauma of conceding not one, not two, not five, not ten, but 17 goals in the final 10 minutes should have imparted onto Brighton’s young players the importance of not thinking the job is done before it is.
Brighton have to improve their mentality if they want to be a Premier League club in the 2021-22 season. There are still 33 points to play for. Those though will be hard to come by if the Albion keep conceding late on, believing that they are already safely on their way into the changing rooms.
Fulham’s recent run of results have shown they have the character and the spirit needed to get out of the mire. From Brighton being 10 points clear of the Cottagers at the start of February, the gap is down to two.
Newcastle United appear to be in freefall with all kinds of nonsense apparently occurring between Steve Bruce and his players behind the scenes.
But do Brighton really want to be relying on a soap opera on Tyneside disrupting the Toon Army so much over the next 11 games to keep the Seagulls in the top flight? We got lucky in 2018-19, we may not be so lucky again.
The Albion need to start winning games to keep themselves in the Premier League rather than hoping for the downfall of a relegation rival. Character and attitude are what is needed to avoid a return to the Championship – and to prove Lallana’s doubts about Brighton & Hove Albion’s mentality wrong.
