Brighton & Hove Albion 2020-21 Season Review: January
As January dawned and the 2020-21 season hurtled towards its halfway point, Brighton & Hove Albion were in relegation trouble with a host of unwanted records in the bag.
One win from 17 matches at the Amex in 2020 set a new Premier League record for fewest home victories one team had ever managed in a calendar year.
Included in that run was a new club record winless home streak whilst two wins from the opening 17 fixtures set a club record worst ever start to a top flight season.
Something had to change in January if Brighton were to avoid falling into the Championship come the end of 2020-21. That something was Graham Potter’s approach.
After spending the first four months of the season chopping and changing his side so much that it was rumoured he made team selections via a roulette wheel, the Brighton boss finally settled on naming his strongest XI.
There was also an adjustment in the way that Brighton played. The Albion abandoned having a possession obsession in favour of a more pragmatic style of play, just like in the final nine games of 2019-20. And just like last time around, it was a decision that helped the Albion survive for another season of Premier League football.
Those changes did not arrive straight away, however. No, January began with an all-too familiar story against Wolves at the Amex of shocking defending from set pieces and unnecessary Potter tinkering.
Five central defenders and one natural central midfielder were named in the side to face the Old Gold. This bizarre selection was overshadowed when Potter appeared in the dugout wearing a suit and scarf for the first time. Little did the Albion boss know at the time just how fabled his new fashion sense was going to become.
Brighton took a 1-0 lead through Aaron Connolly’s second (and final) goal of the season. The Albion were still in a pretty promising position even after some criminal defending from a corner allowed the completely unmarked Romain Saiss to send an excellent looping header over Robert Sanchez for the Wolves equaliser.
It was at this point that Potter made his most mental intervention of the season, one which ended the campaign as a worthy winner of the WAB Strangest Tactical Decision of the Season Award.
Dan Burn and Solly March were coping pretty well with the threat posed by Adama Traore down the flank when Potter switched March and Leandro Trossard over.
Suddenly, Burn had no help with the result being that he scored an own goal, gave away a penalty, got booked and then substituted all within the next 40 minutes. Somewhere in deepest, darkest Ireland, Colin Hawkins was purring his approval.
That meant the Albion went in at half time 3-1 behind. Many Brighton fans were questioning the players’ mentality and whether they had the stomach to fight their way out of a relegation battle. Support was starting to seep away from Potter too with yet another home failure on the cards.
Potter made an inspired double change at half time, introducing the energy and enthusiasm of Andi Zeqiri and the control and coolness of Davy Propper.
Brighton were much improved as a result and went onto show that they could battle, a Neal Maupay penalty and a captain’s goal from Lewis Dunk rescuing the Albion from a seemingly hopeless position as it finished Brighton 3-3 Wolves.
The manner of the comeback against Wolves provided a very welcome boost to morale. There was further joy to come with the news that Percy Tau had finally been granted a British work permit just the two-and-a-half years after Brighton paid £2.5 million to Mamelodi Sundowns for his services.
Newport, Monmouthshire suddenly had the eyes of millions of South Africans on it as the Lion of Judah made his Albion debut in a potential banana skin against League Two promotion hopefuls Newport County.
On a Rodney Parade pitch that resembled the surface of the moon and with one Brighton fan perched in a tree wearing no jumper or coat on a freezing cold Sunday night in January, we were treated to one of the most entertaining games of the 2020-21 season.
Potter to his credit named a strong side, a sensible course of action given the long list of scalps Newport had claimed in cup competitions over recent years.
One of the few changes Brighton did make was to play Jason Steele in goal and it was the Hove Station pub’s number one patron who was the main source of fun.
For most of the 90 minutes, Steele resembled a Sunday League goalkeeper playing after consuming 15 pints of Stella and a couple of grams of MDMA the previous evening.
He managed to get in such a state from a back pass – admittedly a pretty ridiculous one volleyed back to him from 30 yards away by Pascal Gross – that he somehow ended up heading the ball back towards his own goal. Only a magnificent Dunk clearance off the line prevented Newport taking the lead from that little incident..
There was little Dunk could do when Steele did eventually gift the hosts a goal. March thought he had won it for Brighton with a 90th minute effort from outside the box but Steele had other ideas, letting a routine catch sail through his arms to hit the surprised Adam Webster for a 96th minute own goal.
Nobody could force a winner in extra time, it finished Newport 1-1 Brighton and so the game went to penalties. Suddenly, Steele was transformed into prime Gordon Banks as he saved four Newport spot kicks to ensure that the Albion progressed, even though they missed three of their own efforts from 12 yards. Potter described the evening as “traumatic”. It was at least entertaining trauma.
Next up was a trip to face a Manchester City side who were in the middle of a 21 game winning streak. Potter named a weaker side at the Etihad Stadium that he had at Rodney Parade and yet Brighton gave an excellent account of themselves, giving City a bit of a fright even though they went down 1-0 to a Phil Foden goal.
The performance against Pep Guardiola’s billion petrodollar squad gave cause for optimism. That was backed up in the Ben White Derby away at 1996 Coca Cola Cup runners up The Leeds United, where Brighton picked up their first win of January and only their third of 2020-21 via a 1-0 success over the Peacocks.
When Leeds fans spent the summer saying that White loved playing at Elland Road, they weren’t wrong. He gave one of his best performances of the season despite being used as a central midfielder.
This was the first game we saw that aforementioned subtle adjustment in approach from Potter. Brighton had less of the ball than their opponents, playing quicker football on the break than we had become accustomed to.
The only goal of the game was a direct result of this, a beautiful move which swept from one end of the pitch to the other. A glorious touch from Gross found White inside the Brighton half and he drove into The Leeds United territory before feeding Alexis Mac Allister.
The Argentinian was the architect of what happened next. He glided towards the home goal, played a lovely one-two with Leandro Trossard to get in behind the home defence and then swept a low pass across the face of goal for Maupay to tap in.
It was the highlight of an outstanding January for Mac Allister, who won the WAB Brighton Player of the Month Award with easily his best set of performances of the 2020-21 season.
What made the victory at Elland Road even more impressive was that it was achieved without the suspended Yves Bissouma, who was by now starting to attract the attentions of Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United and Real Madrid, to name but four.
Bissouma enhanced his reputation further with another blockbuster goal for his collection as Brighton beat Blackpool 2-1 in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
The result provided a very welcome birthday present to 23,000 Albion fans celebrating after someone in the club’s IT department pressed a button, sending an email to 23,000 season ticket holders wishing them a happy birthday 24 the day before the game.
Bissouma opened the scoring with a spectacular strike from 25 yards which left Tangerines goalkeeper Chris Maxwell clutching at thin air as it arrowed into the top corner.
Blackpool had been decimated by five positive Covid-19 tests in their first team squad in the days leading up to the game but they were not about to go down without a fight.
Gary Madine got across Lewis Dunk to produce a lovely finish with his outstretched boot through the arms of Christian Walton, presumably preferred to Steele as Potter could not handle any more trauma.
There was a huge slice of luck about the Brighton winner, Mac Allister smashing an effort towards goal which cannoned into the back of Steve Alzate to deflect off in the opposite direction to which Maxwell was diving.
It was the sort of fortune that Brighton had been sorely lacking and it gave Alzate his first goal in Albion colours – another reason to celebrate, unless of course you had £25 on Mac Allister to score anytime and had been dancing around at the thought of a pay out of over £100 before the goal was awarded to Alzate, as was the case at WAB Towers.
Brighton were now proving themselves capable of grinding out results. Fulham were the visitors to the Amex for the penultimate match of January, a vital game with the Cottagers one of only three teams below Brighton in the 2020-21 Premier League table at the time.
The good news was that the Albion did not lose. Brighton 0-0 Fulham was a more valuable point for the Seagulls than it was their visitors. It also proved to be the night that the Albion’s wonderful ability to completely underperform their xG was brought to national attention, given that the expected goals scoreline was Brighton 2.26 – 0.79 Fulham. Ouch.
Maupay and Trossard led the way in terms of missed chances with impressive supporting roles from Dunk, Webster and Gross. This was one of those nights that made you think that if Brighton had five shots at John Lennon, he would still be alive today.
That wastefulness in front of goal was nearly punished right at the death by the Cottagers. On one of only two occasions when Fulham made it into the Brighton box in the second half, Ruben Loftus-Cheek thought he had won it in the final seconds when he drilled a low effort past Sanchez. Dunk though had other ideas and produced an utterly outrageous flying block on the line.
The failure to beat Fulham extended Brighton’s winless home run to 14. There seemed to be two schools of thought ahead of the visit of Tottenham Hotspur to round off January – either Brighton would get hammered or, having failed to beat Sheffield United, West Bromwich Albion, Burnley and Fulham at home so far in 2020-21, it would be against Jose Mourinho’s Spurs that the rut ended.
Brighton being Brighton, it was of course the second of those options. 225 days after Arsenal had been the last visitors vanquished at the Amex, a first half goal from Leandro Trossard gave the Albion a deserved 1-0 victory.
Whilst Brighton were ending a piece of unwanted club history, Mourinho was setting some. Never before in the managerial career of The Special One had he lost three consecutive matches away from home against an opponent.
It was an evening when everything came together for Potter, result matching a performance in which every Albion player was excellent – helped of course by the fact he named an unchanged starting XI from the Fulham game and Brighton were happy to let Spurs dominate.
After four long months, Brighton appeared to have finally discovered a winning formula for 2020-21 in January. The Albion would take that into February, a month that was about to begin with one of the most famous victories in Albion history…
January 2021 record: P7 W3 D3 L1 F8 A6
Results: 3-3 v Wolves (H), 1-1 v Newport (A), 0-1 v Manchester City (A), 1-0 v Leeds (A), 2-1 v Blackpool (H), 0-0 v Fulham (H), 1-0 v Spurs (H)
League position at the end of the month: 17th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Alexis Mac Allister
