2019-20 Season Review: December
December was an action-packed month for Brighton as they reached the midway stage of the 2019-20 Premier League season with a healthy 23 points on the board.
Six fixtures yielded two wins, two draws and two defeats. There were scenes of jubilation against Arsenal, rainbows against Wolverhampton Wanderers and tears of joy against Plucky Little Bournemouth.
The month started with a Thursday night visit to the Emirates Stadium. Brighton had played 16 times away from home against the big six since winning promotion to the Premier League in 2017 and won none of them, the code to defeating England’s biggest clubs having evaded Chris Hughton completely and Graham Potter in his four previous attempts so far.
48 points had been up for grabs in those 16 matches. The Albion’s return? One. Which is why Brighton’s 2-1 victory at Arsenal felt like a coming-of-age moment as much as it was a glorious evening in its own right.
Yes, Arsenal were in full-on crisis mode with former underwear model Freddie Ljunberg in caretaker charge, but you still couldn’t take anything away from the Albion who played their illustrious hosts off the park.
Potter deployed two number 10s in a 4-2-2-2 as he had against Tottenham Hotspur in October and just like their north London rivals, Arsenal had no answer to it.
Aaron Mooy in particular was outstanding, the best of a very good Brighton bunch. Adam Webster opened the scoring after Dan Burn headed down a Pascal Gross corner with some very, very lax Arsenal marking offering a helping hand. In fact, the marking was so bad that Adam’s Wetherfield relatives, Sally, Rosie or Sophie Webster could have scored.
Webster’s strike came 10 minutes before the break with many Arsenal fans streaming out – and who could blame them given that the Emirates sells cans of wine on the concourse?
Anyone overindulging at half time would have missed the Gunners’ equaliser which came five minutes into the second half. Mesut Ozil swung over a corner which Alexandre Lacazette turned past Maty Ryan.
David Luiz thought he had put Arsenal ahead but there were one, two, three, four, five players in offside positions when the Brazilian liability scored, which was as impressive as it was ridiculous.
Potter responded to that with two quick-fire substitutions which confused the life out of everyone – including Arsenal. Martin Montoya replaced Aaron Connolly, a full back for a centre forward.
Leandro Trossard then came on for Steve Alzate, a winger for a 21-year-old who had begun the game in his 113th different position of the season at right back. What a versatile and talented young player the Colombian international was turning out to be.
Potter’s changes meant that the Gunners didn’t know who was where or which players they were meant to be picking up. Within four minutes of Trossard’s introduction, the little Belgian’s cross was met by a neat glancing header from Neal Maupay to secure an historic victory at the Emirates.
Three days later and Wolverhampton Wanderers came to Brighton for the second game of December, one of the most entertaining encounters of the entire 2019-20 season.
The day was dedicated to the Rainbow Laces campaign with the Amex decked out with Pride flags and rainbow colours. As Brighton fans, you couldn’t be anything but proud over the way the club supports the LGBT community – although it did seem strange that on the same day that they were promoting gay rights, the club were taking money to advertise Expo Dubai 2020, an event held in a country where homosexuality is punishable for death. Premier League greed and hypocrisy right there for you.
As for the football, all four goals arrived in 16 mad first half minutes. Wolves opened the scoring with a devastating counter attacking move just before the half hour mark, Diego Jota and Raul Jimenez pulling Alzate, Dale Stephens and Webster all over the place before Jota side footed past Ryan for 1-0.
Ryan had already made one fine save from Romain Saiss but even better was to come from the Socceroo when he denied Jota from a one-on-one just four minutes after Wolves had gone ahead.
Had the visitors doubled their advantage, it would have been curtains for the Albion. The importance of Ryan’s stop was highlighted as within two minutes, the Albion went from nearly being 2-0 behind to taking a 2-1 lead.
A wonderful 60 yard pass up the pitch gave Maupay a sight of goal and to the surprise of everyone at the Amex, not least Rui Patricio, the French striker took the shot on early, lashing a volley past Patricio and in for 1-1.
Wolves restarted the game but straight from kick off, Brighton regained possession. If the first goal was route one, then the second was a joy to watch as Mooy and Trossard linked up intricately down the left with Trossard’s cross being met a perfectly placed header from Davy Propper.
It was Propper’s first home goal since joining the Albion from PSV Eindhoven for £9m in the summer of 2017. Sadly for the handsome Dutchman, he undid all his good work just eight minutes later with a blind pass on the edge of his own penalty area.
To be fair to Propper, he did have Webster pointing and bellowing to him to play it to the right. Why Webster thought this was a good idea with Jonny waiting to intercept still remains one of the biggest mysteries of the 2019-20 season eight months on from that cold December evening, but predictably Propper’s pass went straight to the Wolves full back who teed up Jota for his second as it finished Brighton 2-2 Wolves.
Stephens picked up his fifth booking of the campaign in the final seconds, ruling him out for the trip to Crystal Palace eight days later. Up until that point, the midfielder had been one of the first names on Potter’s team sheet and replacing him looked a task that was nigh-on impossible.
Potter though had a plan and Brighton went to Selhurst Park with Yves Bissouma deployed in the holding midfield role. In some ways, it was a season-defining moment as Bissouma would go onto make the position his own over the next seven months, finally establishing himself in the Albion first team with new-found maturity and positional discipline.
Bissouma was the Albion’s best player at Palace in a game they really should have won. The performance was excellent as the Eagles were played off the park for an hour, at which point the statistics read total Brighton domination.
The score was Palace 0-1 Brighton thanks to Maupay, who the shushed the Selhurst family section for good measure. The shot count was Palace 0-10 Brighton.
The on target count was Palace 0-7 Brighton. The corners count was Palace 0-7 Brighton. The possession percentages were Palace 32-68 Brighton.
With grim predictability, not making that supremacy count proved costly. Palace suddenly sparked into life, taking 22 shots in the last 11 minutes to leave the Albion hanging on for a point by the end after Wilfried Zaha (who else?) ensured that the 142nd instalment of the Brighton versus Crystal Palace rivalry ended 1-1.
December rolled on with 2019-20 surprise packages Sheffield United visiting Brighton next. It was an afternoon forget as the Blades won 1-0 with two further goals ruled out thanks to VAR.
With Christmas just four days away, the video referee should have been been receiving a box of After Eight mints and a Lynx Africa gift set at the very least for ensuring that the result did not end up too embarrassing.
Webster in particular endured a torrid time, looking like a petrified lamb anytime the ball was in the air and he had to deal with either David McGoldrick or Oliver McBurnie.
That was the source of the game’s only goal. Henderson’s long kick forward was met by Webster, who was so baffled by what was going on that he succeeded only in heading the ball towards his own goal which put McBurnie in. The striker out-muscled Dunk and beat Ryan at his near post, a terrible goal to concede in a terrible game of football.
Brighton were booed off both at half time and the final whistle, causing Paul Barber to launch an intervention in his next set of programme notes in which he essentially told supporters how they should follow the team. Potter was also critical, which unsurprisingly did little to raise spirits.
Rather than moaning at supporters, what was really needed were three home points against bogey side Plucky Little Bournemouth in the final game of December – especially as Brighton were by now in danger of getting dragged into the Premier League 2019-20 season relegation battle.
Before the Cherries came to the Amex, the Seagulls went to Tottenham Hotspur on Boxing Day. Potter made his priorities pretty clear – Bournemouth game over Spurs game – by making a raft of changes, which included rare starts for Ezequiel Schelotto and Bernardo.
Despite the weakened look of the Albion line up, Webster gave Brighton a half time lead before goals from Harry Kane and Dele Alli completed the turnaround as Tottenham won 2-1.
And so to the Bournemouth fixture which rounded off December, where Potter’s team selection again raised eyebrows, most notably as he gave Alireza Jahanbakhsh his first Brighton start of 2019-20.
Had Potter lost his mind? No was the answer as the Persian Prince put the Albion 1-0 ahead inside of three minutes. It was the biggest Christmas miracle in over 2000 years since a virgin gave birth to the son of God in a stable surrounded by sheep and donkeys.
Jahanbakhsh sunk to his knees when the ball hit the back of the net and burst into tears at the joy of scoring his first Brighton goal at the 26th attempt.
Even his harshest critics – and over here at WAB Towers we certainly had not been kind about a £17 million club-record signing who didn’t register a single goal or assist for 18 months – enjoyed seeing how much getting off the mark meant to Jahanbakhsh.
How could you not like the bloke after that? He had worked hard, got his head down and waited patiently for an opportunity. Compare that to Brighton’s other forward flops.
Jurgen Locadia spent his time out of the team making shit music and looking like he didn’t give a toss about playing football. Florin Andone blamed everyone at the club for not giving him an opportunity despite being a walking red card, before adding that he didn’t want to play for Brighton again.
Jahanbakhsh had the desire and the willingness to prove himself and nobody could say that his goal against Bournemouth wasn’t richly deserved for that alone.
It helped wipe the smile off the face of Smug Eddie Howe too. Mooy doubled the Albion’s advantage in the second half with a stunning effort that was Dennis Bergkamp-esque in the way that the playmaker controlled Trossard’s cross on his chest before ghosting past Chris Mepham and stroking the ball past Aaron Ramsdale.
There was no coming back from that for Bournemouth. Brighton had their first Premier League win over the Cherries for 12 years and Mooy had delivered another scintillating individual display which helped him to win our WeAreBrighton.com December Player of the Month award.
Brighton ended the month – and the decade – in a healthy 15th spot in the table and needing just six more wins from 18 games to hit the magical 40 point mark.
With January bringing five matches against sides below the Albion in the table, most Seagulls supporters had their eyes fixed firmly up the Premier League as 2019 gave way to 2020. Little did we know that it would be six long months before we would cheer a Brighton victory again.
December 2019 record: P6 W1 D2 L2 F8 A7
Results: 2-1 v Arsenal (A), 2-2 v Wolves (H), 1-1 v Palace (A), 0-1 v Sheffield United (H), 1-2 v Tottenham (A), 2-0 v Bournemouth (H)
League position at the end of the month: 15th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Aaron Mooy
