WeAreBrighton.com 2018-19 Season Review: February
Relegation. It was a word that most Albion supporters hadn’t needed to think about for a couple of months as we entered February 2019.
Even a winless January left the Seagulls seven points clear of the Premier League’s bottom three. Any glances over the shoulder were more casual than anything else, just wondering how Cardiff City and co were getting on. There was no real danger that the three very poor teams at the bottom would catch us.
Or so we thought. Fast forward 28 days to the end of February and Brighton were still without a league win in 2019 and more pressingly, Cardiff were only two points behind. Suddenly, the prospect of Championship football was looming ever closer.
Perhaps things would have been different if we’d not come up against two outstanding goalkeepers at the peak of their powers in the first two Premier League matches of the month.
In the first of those, Watford came to the Amex and that they headed back to Hertfordshire with a 0-0 draw under their belts was solely because of Ben Foster.
The former England goalkeepers heroics largely came in the final 11 minutes. On 79, he acrobatically tipped away a Jurgen Locadia header from a Pascal Gross cross.
From the resulting corner, Shane Duffy of all people attempted an overhead kick. Even more remarkable than the sight of the Irish defender performing such a graceful move was the fact it nearly bloody worked as Foster only managed to turn it around the post after a desperate run and lunge across goal that no 36-year-old had any right to be making.
Substitute Florin Andone then burst through to find himself one-on-one with Foster but the goalkeeper stayed big and made a sprawling block with his body to deny the Romanian.
Watford didn’t manage a single shot on target nor a single corner in the entire 90 minutes. Brighton had pulverised a side pushing for a top seven spot and without Foster, could have quite easily won 3-0. How different might the Albion’s season had turned out had that happened? Sadly, we’ll never know.
That Watford game wasn’t only memorable for Foster’s performance – it was also memorable for how unmemorable the first half was. Neither side had a shot on goal, which led to one of our favourite tweets of the season consisting of a photo of a man who had genuinely fallen asleep in the West Stand during the game. Hopefully, he woke up to appreciate the Foster masterclass.
#BHAWAT pic.twitter.com/C5ZtWjPGGo
— We Are Brighton (@wearebrighton) February 2, 2019
A week later and it was Burnley’s Tom Heaton giving arguably an even better performance than Foster had as the Clarets picked up a huge 3-1 victory in Sussex.
Again, there were three saves of the highest quality involved. The first saw Heaton deny Solly March’s brilliant header, the second involved superhuman reactions followed by superhuman strength to push away a Gross volley that was hit so ferociously it probably would have broken the net had it not come into contact with Heaton’s hand first.
The third was the best of the lot. It looked to the whole world like Gross’ looping effort was heading in until Heaton did a passable impression of Stretch Armstrong to somehow tip it away at the expense of a corner.
Heaton’s brilliance at one end was in stark contrast to the ineptitude that the Albion delivered at the other. They gifted Burnley all three goals.
Lewis Dunk slipped over like a man who had covered his feet in butter to allow Chris Wood a clear run at goal for the first, Dale Stephens surrendered possession to Dwight McNeil who fed Wood for his and Burnley’s second and then Ashley Barnes netted from the penalty spot after he’d been hauled down by Ryan.
That Barnes penalty wasn’t without controversy. 30 seconds before Stuart Attwell pointed to the spot, the referee managed to miss Jeff Hendrick practically catch the ball in the Burnley area from no more than 10 yards away.
Hendrick looked as surprised as anyone to get away with it and he took full advantage, throwing the ball forward to start the counter which ended with Barnes being felled by Ryan.
Shane Duffy did manage to net a late consolation, but the simple fact of the matter was that Brighton weren’t very good. They’d failed to turn up in a must win game against a relegation rival, a side who two months ago were 12 points behind the Albion but with their win moved level on points with Chris Hughton’s men.
Luckily, the FA Cup was able to provide a little bit of respite from the woes of the Premier League. Yves Bissouma even managed to win our February Player of the Month award based solely on his performances in the two games that the Albion played in the competition.
The first of those took place in between the Watford and Burnley games as the Albion eventually saw off West Bromwich Albion Reserves, needing extra time in a replay to defeat a Championship side’s development squad.
Hughton sent out a starting line up which cost over £57m in transfer fees, but for all that money it took a goal from the penis of a bloke signed for £300,000 from Rochdale 11 years previously to book Brighton’s place in round five.
Murray was introduced from the bench in the 102nd minute and by the 104th he’d used his schlong to guide Locadia’s cross into the West Brom goal and put the Albion 2-1 ahead. 13 minutes later and he wrapped things up with his second, scored with the much more conventional body part of the foot after being played in by Davy Propper.
That 3-1 victory set up a meeting with Frank Lampard’s Derby County at the Amex. The Rams had developed something of a reputation for giant killing by this point, having already knocked Manchester United and Southampton out of the Carabao and FA Cups and taken Lampard’s former club Chelsea to penalties after drawing at Stamford Bridge.
Brighton though put in a thoroughly professional performance to win 2-1 through first half goals from Anthony Knockaert and Locadia. The quarter final draw was also kind, sending the Albion on a March jaunt to the lowest ranked remaining team in the competition, Championship strugglers Millwall.
Unfortunately, we had to return to the rigours of the Premier League 10 days after defeating Frank Lampard’s Derby. A trip to Leicester City was never likely to be where the Albion got their season back on track, let alone against a Foxes outfit who would be going all out to impress their new manager Brendan Rodgers who was watching from the stands.
As a result of Rodgers’ presence, the hosts flew out of the blocks and were 1-0 ahead through Demari Gray inside the opening 10 minutes. In response to that, Hughton switched from 4-3-3 to 4-5-1 and lo and behold, the Albion were the better side for large periods of the game.
We recorded 51% possession, had 15 shots and won eight corners. Had Murray not been guilty of two horrific, out-of-character misses, then the story from the King Power Stadium could have been very different.
This was further evidence that 4-3-3 simply wasn’t working for this squad of Brighton players, which makes it even more mental that Hughton would persevere with it for another six weeks. Speaking of mental, this was also the game where we got to see Gaetan Bong and Locadia stood over a free kick in a decent position from 30 yards out.
Was that the first sign that Hughton was running out of ideas? A manager at the top of his game isn’t having the conversation: “We’re good at set pieces. Lewis Dunk and Duffy are real threats. We’ve got a couple of people who can deliver the ball. Right, let’s get Bong and Locadia over it to have a shot.”
Jamie Vardy finished off a sweeping passing move for 2-0 early in the second half after Murray had produced his first shocker when failing to even hit the target from six yards, instead ballooning over the bar.
Davy Propper pulled one back for Brighton with a belated first goal for the club and Murray spurned his second glorious opportunity in the closing stages, firing wide from a Bong cross when he really should have given Kasper Schmeichel something to think about.
Brighton certainly had something to think about afterwards. The defeat at the King Power left the Albion as the only team out of the 92 not to have won a league game in 2019.
The relegation zone was in our rear view mirrors and if there were no wins in a March which featured fixtures with Huddersfield Town, Crystal Palace and Southampton, then we’d be doomed. How had it come to this?
February 2019 record: P5 W2 D1 L2 F7 A7
Results: 0-0 v Watford H, 3-1 v West Brom A, 1-3 v Burnley H, 2-1 v Derby H, 1-2 v Leicester A
League position at the end of the month: 16th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Yves Bissouma
