2019-20 Season Review: July
Brighton & Hove Albion saved the best until last as an excellent July saw the Seagulls finish the 2019-20 season with their highest ever Premier League points haul.
Two wins and two draws from six tough games crammed into three weeks lifted the Albion onto 41 points for the season, seven clear of the relegation zone. It was all a far cry from when the Premier League season was suspended in March with Brighton just one point above the bottom three.
Throw in the establishment of young talents like Yves Bissouma and July Player of the Month Tariq Lamptey as first team regulars, Aaron Connolly returning to the goal trail and the debut of a stunning new all blue home shirt and the campaign ended with more positivity surrounding the Albion than there has been for some time.
July kicked off with a huge game for Brighton away at Norwich City, the club who had spent most of the 2019-20 season propping up the Premier League.
Three points at Carrow Road would all but secure survival for the Albion, barring West Ham United, Aston Villa, Watford and Plucky Little Bournemouth all going on unlikely winning runs in the final six fixtures. More on that in a bit…
It was hardly a classic but nobody in stripes was complaining as after 90 nail biting minutes, Leandro Trossard’s first half strike had given the Albion a 1-0 victory. Pray for Jake Humphrey’s Twitter mentions.
The winning goal came as a result of a classic Norwich mistake. The Canaries won the Championship in 2018-19 by playing an expansive brand of attacking football. They simply were not good enough to carry that on in the top flight and much of their woe was self-inflicted in 2019-20 through a lack of transfer business and Daniel Farke being wedded to his philosophy.
All Premier League sides had to do was sit and wait for Norwich to give away the ball through attempting to play passing football and punish the error. Something which Brighton did ruthlessly to score the only goal midway through the first half.
Norwich gave away possession needlessly in midfield. A Bissouma pass, a Neal Maupay thread, a low Aaron Mooy cross from the right wing and a deft flick past Tim Krul from Trossard later and the Albion had the goal which made it Norwich 0-1 Brighton. The one moment of quality in an otherwise dour afternoon.
Three days later and there was plenty of quality on show at the Amex. Unfortunately for Brighton, most of it came from champions Liverpool on their way to a 3-1 success.
Martin Tyler told us before kick off that Jurgen Klopp had not seen his side score an away goal for five matches, a run stretching back nearly five months to February 15th.
No prizes for guessing what happened next. Six minutes had elapsed when the Albion got themselves into a right state attempting a passing triangle on the edge of their own box.
Liverpool’s famous gegenpress put Davy Pröpper in a world of problems, he gave the ball away to Naby Keita who found Mo Salah and the second-best Egyptian to play at the Amex after Adam El-Abd applied the finish. Very Benny Hill.
Less than 120 seconds later and it was Adam Webster’s turn to give out the gifts as he was dispossessed when trying to maraud out from the back with the ball. This time, Jordan Henderson profited to make it 2-0 to Liverpool with less than eight minutes on the clock. More Benny Hill.
Game over before we had even reached the 10 minute mark. To be fair to Brighton, they regrouped well after that and gave the champions a bit of a fright – so much so that Jurgen Klopp had to haul highly rated debutant left back Neco Williams at half time to prevent him getting sent off, such was the torment that Lamptey was causing.
Even with the more experienced Andrew Robertson on the pitch, Lamptey still had a hand in the Brighton goal, delivering the perfect cross after a sweeping passing move for Trossard to hit a stonking volley past Allison Becker.
The Albion missed a glut of chances to grab an equaliser, most notably when Liverpool’s atrocious marking left Dan Burn free at the back post from an Alexis Mac Allister corner.
Unfortunately, Brighton could not capitalise. Burn resembled a very baffled baby giraffe, the ball ended up caught under his skyscraper legs and he could only guide it harmfully wide despite having the goal gaping.
That miss was duly punished with 15 minutes remaining as Liverpool showed Burn and Brighton how to ruthlessly punish slack defending from a set piece. Salah was able to escape the attentions of Lamptey far too easily to guide a free header past Ryan at the near post for 3-1.
The 2019-20 champions had not found it easy against Brighton, which was in stark contrast to what happened when runners up Manchester City came to the Amex in the third match of July.
A weakened team, a lack of height with Connolly deployed as a lone striker, ridiculous mistakes and carelessness in possession all contributed to a 5-0 defeat against Pep Guardiola’s squad built at the cost of a billion petrodollars.
Raheem Sterling became the first away player to score a hat-trick against Brighton since Carl Baker of Stockport County helped the Hatters to a 4-2 win at Withdean in August 2009.
It was the infamous afternoon when Tommy Elphick was sent off, Colin Hawkins came on in a tactical reshuffle and then got red carded himself within 90 seconds.
Propper gave a comical performance that was very Hawkins-esque as he was genuinely City’s best player. Every time he passed the ball, it seemed to go straight to a City player to the point where it wouldn’t be a surprise to lean that he mistakenly got on the away team’s bus after the game rather than into his own car.
Even Potter could not find a way to “take the positives” from the City game. For the first time in his reign, he was openly critical of his players in a post-match press conference, referring to the second goal Brighton had conceded as “unacceptable”. It was more of a shock than the Queen using her Christmas speech to call someone a ****.
Bernardo was responsible for the aforementioned second, leaving Gabriel Jesus completely unmarked from a corner. Maty Ryan then spilled a shot for City’s third, leading to calls for him to be deported back to Australia by some of the more hysterical sections of Brighton’s support.
The fifth goal was our personal favourite as Webster accidentally headed the ball backwards; he and Sterling tumbled to the ground; the ball hit Sterling’s head and went through Ryan’s legs; it trickled towards goal where Burn arrived to smash it against his own post and in.
By the end of the game, there was a sense that Brighton could not be bothered as they viewed themselves as already being safe. That was a dangerous attitude to have, especially with the sides below the Albion in the table suddenly starting to pick up points.
A trip to St Mary’s followed the Manchester City debacle to face an in-form Southampton side who themselves had just beaten City 1-0 at home.
The Albion gave a much improved performance to pick up a 1-1 draw with the most pleasing aspect being that it was four heavily criticised players who made the biggest contribution towards the point.
Glenn Murray made his first start of July – and only his seventh of 2019-20 – and claimed an assist for the Brighton goal, winning a header that nobody else in the Albion squad would have managed to tee up Maupay.
Maupay himself had been on the end of a lot of stick from Arsenal supporters for his antics when Brighton beat Arsenal 2-1 back in June. Gunners fans seemed to have developed this weird obsession with the French striker and he duly celebrated his goal by making a crying face, a gesture presumably aimed at the latest set of supporters to develop a hatred of him.
Murray and Maupay was a partnership that many of us had wanted to see Potter deploy. Before the July trip to Southampton, they had partnered each other for a grand total of 383 minutes in 2019-20 and made just one start together in Brighton shirts. Their link up for a well-worked opener was an example of what might have been.
Webster was colossal at the heart of the Brighton defence, blocking, heading and tackling everything in his best performance of the campaign. It had taken the best part of 10 months, but Webster now looked every bit an £18 million defender who belonged in the Premier League.
Ryan was the other man to prove the doubters wrong, pulling off the save of the season to preserve Brighton’s point in the second half.
His goal had been living a charmed life. Southampton had rattled the frame on a couple of occasions either side of Danny Ings’ equaliser for the Saints as Brighton came under serious pressure.
With 18 minutes left, it appeared to the world like Jannik Vestergaard had finally broken the Albion resistance to notch a winner as his shot sped towards the very top left hand corner of Ryan’s net.
Out of nowhere, a blur of black came flying through the air. It looked like Batman when he opens his cape and drops in on an unsuspecting villain to save Gotham from disaster; except this was Ryan rather than Bruce Wayne and the danger was a football which might have seen Brighton leaving St Mary’s empty handed. Ryan got a finger onto the ball to push it onto the bar.
Forget the save of the season actually, it might have been the best save made by any Brighton goalkeeper ever. The distance he had to cover to get there, the agility to do just about enough to get a touch… it was an extraordinary piece of goalkeeping to go with the Michel Kuipers double save at Wolverhampton Wanderers, Ben Roberts at Bradford City and David Stockdale against Sheffield Wednesday in the top tier of stops made by Albion keepers.
Ryan followed that up with a clean sheet in the final home game of 2019-20 when Newcastle United came to Brighton on a hot July evening. The Albion got the point which mathematically guaranteed safety in a 0-0 draw but other than that, it is hard to recall a single thing that happened other than a spree of yellow cards. It was the most boring game of football there has been in a long, long time.
The Albion finished the campaign with a trip to the 19th century to face Burnley. Victory for the Clarets would have given them their best every Premier League points total and Nick Pope was a clean sheet away from winning the Golden Glove award.
Brighton had not read the script though as they won 2-1 through a brilliant 30 yard effort from Bissouma and Connolly’s first goal since October.
It was the Seagulls’ first win against Burnley since 2013 and their first triumph at Turf Moor since 2012. More exciting than finally beating Sean Dyche’s side however was the pointers that it gave to the future.
Not only were Brighton wearing the best home kit we have seen for nearly a decade, but Potter named a young side in a 3-4-1-2 formation. The return of three at the back perhaps pointed to how Potter intends to fit Dunk, Webster and the returning Ben White into the same starting line up.
Bissouma was superb in central midfield, Lamptey looked even more at home as a wing back than he had in his previous seven games at right back, there was room for Mac Allister to shine as a number 10 and Connolly ended his barren run of form in front of goal.
Beating a side as good as Burnley on their own patch was the culmination of what had been, by-and-large, an excellent nine games post-lockdown.
Potter had clearly used the three month break in action to go away, analyse what worked for the Albion and what didn’t and adjusted his approach accordingly. The result was less possession, more goals, better football and improved results.
If Brighton can take their June and July form from the 2019-20 season into 2020-21, it could be a very good year for the Albion – especially with White coming into the first team squad and some shrewd acquisitions already made such as Adam Lallana and Joel Veltman.
These are exciting times to be a Brighton fan. Now we just need to hope that some supporters can be inside stadiums to witness them.
July 2020 record: P6 W2 D2 L2 F5 A10
Results: 1-0 v Norwich (A), 1-3 v Liverpool (H), 0-5 v Manchester City (H), 1-1 v Southampton (A), 0-0 v Newcastle (H), 2-1 v Burnley (A)
League position at the end of the month: 15th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Tariq Lamptey
