Brighton & Hove Albion 2022-23 Season Review: August
Different manager. Different playing style. Different aims. Different times. Brighton winning at Old Trafford and a Wednesday night spent in a vegan Gloucestershire village seems like a lifetime ago, rather than it all taking place in August of the 2022-23 season.
What were you honest expecting from the new campaign before it kicked off on a surprisingly sunny day in Manchester on Sunday 7th August 2022?
The realistic feeling here at WAB Towers was the the Albion would do well to repeat the previous season’s ninth place finish.
Most sides who crack the top 10 for the first time suffer from a form of second season syndrome and drop back down the table.
Couple that with the sale of Yves Bissouma to Spurs for £25 million and the impending departure of reigning Player of the Season Marc Cucurella, and Graham Potter appeared to have a job on his hands to deliver another top half placing.
Manchester United away on the opening day could not have provided a tougher start, either. No Brighton side had ever won at Old Trafford, where the hosts would surely be keen to make a good impression as Erik ten Hag took charge of his first competitive game as United boss.
Pascal Gross seemingly cared little for the special occasion. Two first half goals from Der Kaiser set the Albion on their way to a 2-1 victory to leave Ten Hag tearing his hair out.
United were booed off at the break and although they improved a little in the second half, Brighton never really looked in danger of surrendering their lead totally.
The hosts had to rely on a gift from Robert Sanchez to claim their consolation. A corner came over, the Albion goalkeeper got nowhere near it, Harry Maguire bundled the ball towards the line and Alexis Mac Allister eventually sliced in an own goal during the ensuing melee.
Brighton survived the only other hairy moment, again caused by Sanchez. This time, he parried a routine Marcus Rashford shot which Joel Veltman had to hack off the line.
It was not all bad from Sanchez. Before his funny five minutes, he produced stunning one-on-one block from Rashford in a rare United attack.
What made the win all the more remarkable was that it was achieved without a single new face in Potter’s starting XI. Brighton had not delved into the transfer market to sign replacements for Bissouma or Cucurella, and yet with this apparently weaker squad than last season had beaten United away from home for the first time in 121 years.
Crucially, Potter appeared to have retired his famous selection roulette wheel. He stuck with the same innovative 3-3-3-1 formation which nobody in the Premier League had figured out how to stop in the final eight games of the previous season and took the radical approach of using players in their natural positions.
This carried on into the second game of August, which brought one of the sides fancied to do well in 2022-23 to Brighton.
Newcastle United had improved beyond all recognition since the appointment of Smug Eddie Howe the previous November and with almost unlimited Saudi blood money backing them, their climb up the standings was expected to continue.
The Toon would have suffered defeat at the Amex were it not for an outstanding display from goalkeeper Nick Pope. Brighton had seven shots on target but could find no way past the England international.
Efforts from Adam Lallana and Gross were scrambled off the line and there were six other chances wastefully placed off target. A final score of Brighton 0-0 Newcastle pleased nobody other than those who liked to laugh at the Albion’s xG numbers.
Any concerns that the draw against the Sportswashing FC was a return to the bad old catalogue of misses days from 2020-21 were duly dispelled at West Ham United.
Brighton scored two goals from two shots on target to pick up their now-normal result against the not-so-happy Hammers, winning 2-0 at the London Stadium.
Mac Allister had been briefly made the scapegoat of the Twitterati, with questions like “wHaT dOeS MaC alLIsTeR eVen dO?” being bandied around social media and calls (yes, this really did happen) for Jeremy Sarmiento to start in his place.
The man who four months later would be a World Cup winner with Argentina duly responded to his critics by helping win and then converting the penalty to give Brighton the lead.
Mac Allister won possession from cat-loving Kurt Zouma and then released Leandro Trossard down the left. Trossard galloped away to feed Danny Welbeck, whose speed took him past Thilo Kehrer and caused the Hammers’ new German centre back to bring down Dat Guy.
Referee Anthony Taylor pointed to the penalty spot. VAR confirmed the foul had taken place inside the area and Mac Allister smashed home the spot kick, approximately three miles away from where the Albion support were located at the opposite end of the London Stadium.
The second goal was magically created and again involved Mac Allister, whose forward pass into Gross was brilliantly flicked on via deft touch from Der Kaiser. That sent Trossard galloping away and he beat Lukasz Fabianski one-on-one.
Shortly afterwards and new £15 million signing from Villarreal Pervis Estupinan came on for his debut. Estupinan made an instant impression with his swashbuckling style up and down the left, although nobody could have known that August day quite what a fantastic player he would turn out to be for Brighton in 2022-23.
The second round of the Carabao Cup provided the Albion with what many fans considered to be a dream draw – Forest Green Rovers away from home.
A winnable tie. Lower league opposition based in a Cotswolds village with a population less than Hurstpierpoint. Another tick towards the 92 as a stadium most Brighton supporters would never have been to before.
The football was not bad, either. Potter made 11 changes from the side who started at West Ham, giving full competitive debuts to fringe players Jan Paul van Hecke, Levi Colwill, Kaoru Mitoma, Julio Enciso, Evan Ferguson and Deniz Undav.
Undav, Steve Alzate and Ferguson got the goals with assists from Ferguson, Enciso and Cam Peupion in a routine 3-0 win for the Albion.
The penultimate game of August saw Brighton host 1996 Coca Cola Cup runners up The Leeds United in the first top five clash of the 2022-23 season.
Leeds arrived at the Amex in third spot and fresh from drubbing Chelsea 3-0 at Elland Road, for whom – try not to laugh at this – Cucurella had endured a nightmare afternoon.
For much of the opening hour, it looked like a repeat of the Newcastle game might be on the cards. Brighton dominate. Brighton fail to score. Brighton drop more points.
Gross though had other ideas. His third goal in three games arrived on 66 minutes and was clinically despatched into the bottom corner with power and precision.
That took the Albion to the top of the Premier League table. 25 years and 12 days on from struggling to a 1-1 draw against Macclesfield Town at the bottom of Nationwide Division Three in their first home game at the Priestfield Stadium, Brighton were officially the best team in England.
Officially and fleetingly, because the fun only last four minutes. Crystal Palace of course had to ruin it, falling behind to Manchester City within 300 seconds of Gross’ shot hitting the back of the net.
City replaced the Albion at the head of the standings on goal difference, but not before Seagulls supporters had milked every one of those 300 seconds with a constant chorus of “We’re Brighton & Hove Albion, we’re top of the league” bellowing around the Amex.
Beating The Leeds United set up the tantalising prospect of the Seagulls returning to the top of the table for at least 24 hours, if they could beat Fulham on their Tuesday night visit to Craven Cottage with none of Arsenal, City or Spurs in action until the Wednesday.
Potter shuffled his pack, deciding that two games in the space of four days was too much for Welbeck. With Undav not yet trusted to start in the Premier League, Ferguson considered an Under 21s squad player and Neal Maupay having been sold for £15 million to Everton the previous Friday, that meant Trossard playing as a false nine.
The result was a toothless Brighton display and a 2-0 defeat, their first reversal of the 2022-23 season and one and only of August.
When Potter realised inside 20 minutes that his plan was not working, he opted to change it by pushing Enock Mwepu up front. A strange solution, to say the least.
It was the familiar figure of regular Albion tormentor Aleksandar Mitrovic who put Fulham ahead three minutes into the second half, sliding in a cross from Neeskens Kebano at the back post.
Fulham’s second goal came from a Brighton corner. Gross’ delivery was cleared to Estupinan, who got his control horribly wrong to gift possession to Mitrovic.
Estupinan chopped down Mitrovic in an attempt to win the ball back. Fulham were already breaking with debutant referee Thomas Bramall – in what was one of the best officiating performances seen in a Albion game in 2022-23 – playing a good advantage.
Less than 10 seconds later and the Cottagers had swept up the other end, Andreas Pereira was crossing into the box and Lewis Dunk was beating Sanchez with a quite wonderful own goal slid in from 15 yards out.
Brighton had blown their chance to end August at the top of the early 2022-23 season Premier League table. But that disappointment was the only negative in what had been an outstanding opening month of the campaign.
Five wins and a draw from six matches. Only three conceded and just one of those from an opposition player thanks to Mac Allister and Dunk both sticking own goals past Sanchez.
A new centre forward as the transfer window prepared to slam shut who could ease the burden on Welbeck might have been nice. Otherwise though, things were going rather swimmingly in the world of Brighton & Hove Albion.
Little did anybody know what was coming nine days into September.
August 2022 record: P6 W4 D1 L1 F8 A3
Results: 2-1 v Man United (A), 0-0 v Newcastle (H), 2-0 v West Ham (A), 3-0 v Forest Green (A), 1-0 v Leeds (H), 0-2 v Fulham (A)
League position at the end of the month: 4th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Pascal Gross
