2019-20 Season Review: September
The opening month of the 2019-20 season had seen Brighton produce some seriously impressive performances – the challenge in September was to start delivering results to match.
Substance had to come with Graham Potter’s undoubted style. At the end of August, Brighton were 16th in the Premier League table with four points on the board.
That looked something of a false position – in fact, you could argue that the Albion could have been as high as third. The opening day win at Watford should have been followed by six points against West Ham United and Southampton; a combination of VAR, Lukasz Fabianski and Florin Andone’s penchant for trying to hurt people proving costly.
So rather than consolidating a Champions League spot, September instead became about trying to pull clear of the early relegation zone. Two winnable games against Burnley and Newcastle United offered an excellent chance to do that and there was also the opportunity for progress towards another day out at Wembley as Aston Villa came to the Amex in the third round of the Camila Cabello Cup.
In the end, neither leagues wins nor cup joy happened. Brighton again played well in September but they couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net – the story of the 2019-20 season really.
Combine that with defensive mistakes and you had a winless month. “Results will come” remained a buzz phrase even though nearly a fifth of the Premier League season had been completed.
Burnley at the Amex should have been three points. Potter raised a few eyebrows by naming Lewis Dunk, Shane Duffy, Dan Burn and Adam Webster in his starting lineup. The answer to where four central defenders fitted in was that Webster would actually be playing out-of-position as a right wing back.
The first half was about as entertaining as a bout of gout. Once Potter abandoned the idea of Webster as a roving winger and switched to a back four, Brighton were brilliant again.
16 shots rained down on Nick Pope’s goal but only one made it onto the scoreboard, Neal Maupay scoring his first home goal in Albion colours.
Regardless of the Albion’s wastefulness in front of goal, they should have won the game. The Seagulls entered injury time leading 1-0 and with their four centre backs now joined on the pitch by a left back and four central midfielders in a ploy straight from How to hold onto a 1-0 lead for Dummies by Chris Hughton – and yet Burnley still carved their way through as easily as a knife in butter.
The leveller started with a short goal kick from Pope. Six passes later and the Clarets had advanced 80 yards up the pitch without so much as a challenge being put in, teeing up Jeff Hendrick to drill into the bottom corner from the edge of the box to make it Brighton 1-1 Burnley.
Two points dropped. In the week following the Burnley stalemate, there was a bizarre clamour to bring Jurgen Locadia and Andone – packed off on loan to Hoffenheim and Galatasaray respectively – back to the Albion to address the alarming lack of cutting edge.
With impeccable timing, Andone chose the aftermath of the Burnley game to give an interview to The Athletic in which he said he Hughton, Potter, Locadia, Glenn Murray and everyone else at Brighton was to blame for the fact that he had scored the same number of goals (six) as games he had missed through suspension in his year at the Amex. Talk about burning bridges.
A week after the draw with the Clarets came the trip to Newcastle. No prizes for guessing what happened at St James’ Park as for the second time in September, Brighton missed chance after chance after chance on their way to dropping further points in the 2019-20 season.
It finished Newcastle 0-0 Brighton but in reality, it could have been Newcastle 0-12 Brighton. The Albion took 16 shots and had an astonishing 71% of possession. Manchester City had less of the ball on the same weekend and they beat Watford 8-0.
There were two particularly glaring opportunities squandered by the men in green. The first came when Maupay opted to shoot when he could have played the simplest of passes to present Steve Alzate with an open goal.
In the second half, Aaron Connolly then lobbed Martin Dubravka but Fabian Schar just about got back to produce an acrobatic goal line clearance. It was a spectacular piece of defending.
Alzate shone on his Premier League debut at St James’ Park, one of four central midfielders named in Potter’s starting XI to follow on from the four central defenders a week earlier.
He even had the ball in the back of the net after a brilliant passing move which went from front to back. Unfortunately, it was correctly ruled out for offside.
The inclusion of both Alzate and Connolly in the matchday 18 highlighted Potter’s faith in youth, a quality in stark contrast to Hughton who had given just two development squad players – Rob Hall and James Tilley – league debuts during his four-and-a-half years at the helm.
Potter went a step further for the cup tie with Aston Villa four days later. Andy Naylor wrote in The Athletic in the lead up to the game how Brighton should take the competition seriously as a means for giving supporters a memorable day out at Wembley, a shot at a first piece of major silverware since 1909 and the opportunity to qualify for the Europa League.
Unfortunately for Naylor and those who were hoping for a cup run to match the previous season’s FA Cup adventure, Potter couldn’t have taken this clash with Villa less seriously if he’d dressed up as a clown and spent the 90 minutes riding a unicycle around the perimeter of the pitch while given out balloon animals to children.
Never before have we gone to a game and had to Google the Brighton starting lineup to know who they were. There’s playing a weakened side to protect players for the bread and butter of Premier League football, and then there’s throwing in two 17-year-olds, an 18-year-old, three 19-year-olds and one 20-year-old. None of whom would have been allowed in Molly Malone’s alongside captain-for-the-evening Duffy when they operate their over 21s door policy.
£20 for a ticket to watch the Under 18s understandably left many Albion fans feeling ripped off. To be fair to Brighton’s young guns, they gave a much more experienced Villa side a run for their money in the second half once they had settled down after conceding two early goals on their way to a 3-1 defeat.
England Under 17 centre back Haydon Roberts capped a man-of-the-match performance by heading home a Teddy Jenks corner for the Albion’s consolation.
Roberts and Jenks were the most impressive of the Albion youngsters although the undoubted highlight of the evening was French full back Romaric Yapi joining the action, leading the North Stand to sing “If you’re Yapi and you know it clap your hands”. It has to be the greatest player song in Brighton history.
There was not much to be Yapi about at Stamford Bridge three days later. Brighton have never taken so much as a point from Chelsea away and that wasn’t about to change in their final outing of September, where the Blues picked up their first home win of the 2019-20 season under new boss Frank Lampard.
Brighton gave their worst performance of the campaign to date to be well beaten 2-0. Defensive mistakes and the failure to string even a five yard pass together allowed Chelsea to rack up 23 shots and without Maty Ryan having one of those game, it could have been a cricket score.
17 of those Blues’ efforts came in the first 45 minutes, the most any side had managed in a single half of Premier League football for six years.
Both Chelsea goals were giveaways. Webster’s woefully under hit back pass ended up being a through ball for Mason Mount, who took full advantage of the situation and when Webster’s attempts to retrieve possession only resulted in him hauling Mount down, Jorginho calmly beat Ryan from the penalty spot for 1-0.
Dunk was culpable for the second when his attempted Hollywood pass across the pitch which was cut out, allowing Callum Hudson-Odoi to come forward and tee up Willian whose shot deflected off Burn and past Ryan.
It took until the 91st minute for Brighton to muster a shot on target when Dale Stephens tried his luck from 25 yards but it was a straightforward save in the end for Kepa Arrizabalaga.
There were some curious substitutions too, left back Gaetan Bong replacing the attack-minded Yves Bissouma seconds before Chelsea took the lead. It was all very Hughton-esque and represented a disappointing end to a disappointing September.
Nothing summed up the second month of the 2019-20 season better than Roberts being voted as our WeAreBrighton.com Brighton Player of the Month for September.
A 17-year-old winning the award for scoring a consolation goal in a 3-1 League Cup defeat against Aston Villa wasn’t exactly a glowing endorsement of the results that the Albion had served up.
Potter’s honeymoon period was over. One win in seven and only two goals scored in 540 minutes since the opening day at Watford was not what this bright new era was meant to look like.
The new Brighton boss needed to start putting points on the board if autumn wasn’t to give way to a winter of discontent. Thankfully, a much brighter October was around the corner.
September 2019 record: P4 W0 D2 L2 F2 A6
Results: 1-1 v Burnley (H); 0-0 v Newcastle (A); 1-3 v Aston Villa (H); 0-2 v Chelsea (A).
League position at the end of the month: 16th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Haydon Roberts
