2019-20 Season Review: August
Saturday 10th August 2019. It was a beautiful August day, the sun was shining, the beers had been flowing in Pinner and Brighton & Hove Albion were about to start their 2019-20 Premier League campaign away at Watford with new manager Graham Potter in the dugout.
Nobody really knew what to expect. Potter had spent over £60 million to bring in Leandro Trossard, Neal Maupay, Adam Webster and Matt Clarke. None of those had any experience in the Premier League; Clarke had in fact been loaned straight to the Championship with Derby County.
Aaron Mooy did add some top flight nous but few people could understand why Potter felt he needed another number 10 with Pascal Gross already on the Albion’s books. The answer, as we would find out, was because Potter had some very different ideas to traditional managers when it comes to positions and tactics.
All through May, June, July and August right up the the start of the 2019-20 season, Brighton had taken a hammering from pundits and experts for sacking Chris Hughton.
From the outside looking in, it was understandable. Hughton had taken the Albion from the clutches of League One to the Premier League, kept the club up for two seasons and delivered an unbelievable day out in an FA Cup Semi Final. How can you reward a man for achieving all that with his P45?
Regular Brighton watches knew that something had gone very wrong in the second half of the 2018-19 season, however. Two wins in 18 league games will put any boss in danger of the chop – although Potter himself would also go onto oversee a run of two victories from 19 – and the football had been dire.
The changing room looked lost and home defeats to Burnley, Southampton, Plucky Little Bournemouth and Cardiff City spelled trouble. As sad as it was, Hughton had to go; otherwise, relegation seemed a grim certainty in 2019-20.
Still, there were no guarantees that appointing Potter from Swansea City would work. Countless Premier League sides have replaced managers for being defensive minded, only for this desire to see more entertaining football end in struggle and a drop into the Championship.
Stoke City, Crystal Palace, Southampton, Bolton Wanderers, West Ham United, West Bromwich Albion… they have all been there. It was no wonder that Brighton were touted by many as relegation certainties.
And so to Vicarage Road, where we would be given our first look at Potter’s new look, attack-minded Brighton who were apparently going to play passing football that would make Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona look like 1980s Wimbledon (the football team, not the tennis place).
Watford were no slouches. They had finished the 2018-19 campaign with their best ever Premier League points total and reached the FA Cup Final. And yet in 90 extraordinary minutes, Brighton ended up playing them off the park to get the Potter era off to the best possible start with a 3-0 victory.
It was the Albion’s biggest away win since winning promotion in 2017. Most impressive of all was that it was delivered with no new signings in the starting 11 – every single player had been at the club under Hughton, although Big Dan Burn hadn’t been afforded a minute of league football under the previous manager since signing from Wigan Athletic.
Lining up in a 3-4-3, it was Watford’s Abdoulaye Doucoure who got the party started when he turned Pascal Gross’ low cross past Ben Foster for an own goal.
Brighton created plenty of chances after that but couldn’t make them stick on the scoreboard. That was until Potter made a bold double change, throwing on Maupay and Florin Andone just past the hour mark.
Under Hughton, we would have had to wait until the 74th minute to see a first change which would have been Beram Kayal replace Gross. And here Potter was introducing two attackers in an attempt to kill the game off. What was this madness?
The madness worked. Within 60 seconds, Andone made it 2-0 with his first touch and 12 minutes later, Maupay added his name to a great list of players wearing the number seven shirt to score on their Brighton debut. Darren Freeman, Leon Knight, Gifton Noel-Williams, Will Hoskins and now Maupay.
It was chalk and cheese from the ultra-cautious away performances served up over the previous two years under Hughton. If Brighton could go to an established mid-table Premier League side and win 3-0, imagine what they could do at the Amex under Potter?
The week leading up to his first appearance in the Amex dugout seemed to drag on for 70 years, such was the excitement about seeing the Albion playing the same way in front of a packed home crowd.
West Ham United were the visitors and although the Albion gave another vibrant display, it was a frustrating afternoon. Again, Brighton were not clinical enough – something that would become a running theme throughout the 2019-20 season – as the Hammers somehow escaped with a 1-1 draw on another glorious August afternoon.
The visitors had a combination of Lukasz Fabianski and VAR to thank for that. Brighton’s first taste of a bloke in a call centre next to the A40 deciding whether you can or cannot celebrate a goal came when Trossard’s crashing volley in the 28th minute was disallowed because Burn had a finger offside.
VAR had another look when Trossard hit the back of the net again in the second half but there was nothing it could do to deny the Belgian a goal on his home debut this time.
That ended up being an equaliser as Javier Hernandez had given the Hammers the lead four minutes earlier with one of their three shots. Brighton in contrast had 16, 15 of which Fabianski kept out. Frustrating was the only word to describe it.
A week later and it was a different type of frustration, centred on one individual as Southampton came to the Amex. Potter handed Andone his first start of the campaign and the Romanian striker responded by reminding everyone what a hot headed liability he can be by picking up a straight red card inside of 30 minutes.
Andone’s crime was a terrible stamp tackle which could have broken Yan Valery’s leg. It completely changed the complexion of the game; Brighton went from being totally dominant (again) to having to play for over an hour with 10 men on a boiling hot day.
Red card after 29 minutes. Absolute fucking clown https://t.co/6aiv0pYUjT
— We Are Brighton (@wearebrighton) August 24, 2019
They gave it a bloody good go with another positive performance but Moussa Djenepo scored 10 minutes into the second half with Southampton’s first shot on target as the Albion began to run out of steam.
Locadia had a glorious chance to level things up when he found himself completely unmarked at the back post six yards out and with just Angus Gunn to beat.
All Locadia needed to do was place the ball out of reach of Gunn and it would be 1-1. Instead, he hit it as hard as he could and only succeeded in smashing the ball into post, securing Brighton Miss of the 2019-20 Season in just the third game of August.
To compound that unbelievable gaffe, Nathan Redmond added a second in stoppage time for the Saints. A game that really should have been an Albion victory ended with a final score of Brighton 0-2 Southampton.
Potter said he couldn’t defend Andone afterwards and within a week, the Romanian striker had been packed off to Galatasaray until the end of the season. Locadia too was sent to pastures new, joining Bundesliga side Hoffenheim on loan.
Brighton suddenly looked very light in the strikers department and with the English transfer window having closed three weeks earlier than the European one, 19-year-old Aaron Connolly found himself thrust into the first team picture. Connolly was handed his Albion debut in the Camila Cabello Cup second round away at League One Bristol Rovers.
It was an evening to remember for the Irishman as he opened the scoring at the Memorial Ground. Tom Nicols pulled one back for the Gas which left an unwanted 30 minutes of extra time looming right up until the 92nd minute when captain-for-the-evening Murray notched a winner.
Brighton ended August with a trip to Manchester City, who were looking to make 2019-20 their third Premier League title win in a row. In keeping with Potter’s positive approach, the Albion went to the Etihad Stadium and tried to take the game to City.
The gulf in class was too much and it was a comfortable afternoon in the end for the champions, who ran out 4-0 winners. Kevin De Bruyne made it 1-0 with less than 120 seconds on the clock, a Sergio Aguero brace followed and Bernardo Silva added a fourth late on.
Aguero was certainly impressed by Burn. There was one moment at the Etihad when a ball dropped from Jupiter and Burn brought it down first time before spinning away from Aguero. The Argentinian striker was totally dumbfounded by what he had witnessed and could only stand there applauding Burn.
Nobody summed up the drastic change from Brighton under Hughton to Brighton under Potter than Burn. A player who Hughton used in just a handful of FA Cup ties had gone from fourth choice centre back to being the voted as our first WeAreBrighton.com Brighton Player of the Month of the 2019-20 season for a barnstorming set of August performances.
Guardiola also had words of praise for Potter and his team. The Albion’s new style of football was already gaining admirers and the theory went that positive results would soon start matching positive performances.
In one shirt month, Potter had made being a Brighton fan exciting again.
August 2019 record: P5 W2 D1 L2 F6 A8
Results: 3-0 v Watford (A); 1-1 v West Ham (H); 0-2 v Southampton (H); 2-1 v Bristol Rovers (A); 0-4 v Manchester City (A).
League position at the end of the month: 16th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Dan Burn
