Brighton & Hove Albion 2020-21 Season Review: March
March was a massive month in Brighton & Hove Albion’s 2020-21 season. Two wins from three saw Graham Potter and Leandro Trossard nominated for Premier League Manager and Player of the Month respectively and although nobody knew it at the time, victory at Southampton turned out to be the last points the Seagulls would need to guarantee survival as Fulham began floundering.
High flying Leicester City provided the first opposition of the month. Despite the 14 places that separated the Foxes in second with Brighton in 16th at the start of March, it was Brighton who should have won the game – an all too familiar tale in 2020-21.
That it finished Brighton 1-2 Leicester was because of some more appalling game management from the Albion, making it 17 points dropped from winning positions in 27 matches.
Against the Foxes, Brighton were excellent in the first half. They led through Adam Lallana with a goal made by Neal Maupay. The French striker did brilliantly to hold off a Leicester challenge before sweeping the perfect low pass into the path of Lallana rushing into the box.
Lallana made no mistake, lashing an effort past Kasper Schmeichel as Brighton scored with their first real shot on goal. A far cry to the the previous two home matches against Aston Villa and Crystal Palace which had yielded one goal from 41 attempts.
At the heart of everything good Brighton did was Lallana. Leicester could not get the ball off him in the opening 45 minutes, save for when Jamie Vardy laid off to Sidnei Tavares who hit a thumping volley which looked destined for the back of the net.
Robert Sanchez though flung himself to his left and showed an extraordinary strong wrist to turn the ball around the post at full stretch.
Lallana nearly had a second shortly after that Sanchez save, only for his flicked header from a Pascal Gross free kick to hit the post with Schmeichel floundering.
Next it was Lallana’s turn to be the provider. His gorgeous around the corner touch played in Maupay who beat Schmeichel but not the offside trap.
Another 45 minutes like that and Brighton would have their first Premier League win over Leicester at the eighth attempt. Not for the first time however, there was a marked drop off in performance in the second half and Leicester – despite arriving at the Amex with a host of injuries – came back to take all three points.
As the half wore on, Leicester became more and more dominant. Lallana was starting to tire which was hardly a surprise as this was his first Premier League start since Boxing Day and he had covered every blade of grass. Trossard meanwhile was having one of those nights where a cardboard cut out of Noel Edmonds would have been more effective.
Brighton were crying out for changes to freshen things up. An injection of pace from the bench would have made the Albion more of a threat on the counter and given Leicester something different to think about.
Virtually everybody watching could see something needed to be done – everybody except the one man whose decision making matters. Potter sat twiddling his thumbs and when Leicester equalised through Kelechi Iheanacho, it came as a surprise to nobody.
Lewis Dunk was the man at fault, allowing Iheanacho to escape his attentions far too easily. As Youri Tielemans slipped the ball through, Dunk looked like a lost dog, produced a wild attempt at a sliding block and then had to watch from the ground as Iheanacho showed great composure to beat Sanchez one-on-one.
The winner arrived four minutes from time courtesy of Sanchez’s first glaring error since usurping Maty Ryan in the Brighton goal back in December.
Over came a corner, Big Bob turned into a ghost as the delivery sailed straight through his arms when he attempted to gather and Daniel Amartey had the simple task of guiding the ball into the empty net.
Following Brighton defeats like this in the 2020-21 season prior to March, we had been treated to Potter explaining it away by saying that the Albion would learn and take the positives.
And whilst Potter may have given a typically wooden interview as Leicester packed the three points onto their team coach to take back to the East Midlands, Lallana spoke with refreshing honesty about what had gone wrong.
“Second half we were poor,” said the Albion midfielder. “It almost felt like we had won the game at half-time. If you drop your levels you get punished.”
“There have been games we’ve felt hard done by but today doesn’t feel like that. We didn’t perform well enough in the second half. We’ve proven we can get results against big teams. We all dropped off a couple of percent. We were too passive and we got punished.”
Now, you may have noticed that Potter and Trossard took a bit of a caning for their roles in the Leicester defeat, making their turnarounds over the next 180 minutes of football to end up nominated for March’s awards even more impressive.
The Southampton game a week later could not have been further from that Leicester second half as Brighton won at St Mary’s for the first time in 12 years, going back to the 3-1 win Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named oversaw in his debut in the Albion dugout.
For the first time this season, Brighton won a game of football that they should have lost according to expected goals. Southampton had an xG of 1.03 compared to the Albion’s 0.97, as well as 59 possession and leading the shot count. And yet it was the Albion who picked up three deserved points thanks to a set of inspired half time interventions from Potter.
Southampton should have been out of sight in a first half in which they were completely on top. Brighton had gone 1-0 ahead somewhat against the run of play when Dunk headed home a typically pinpoint corner from Gross but the Albion led for only 10 minutes.
Stuart Armstrong whipped a cross in, Joel Veltman made a rare error in getting outjumped by Ryan Bertrand and Dunk helped the ball straight into the path of Che Adams to volley in from close range.
Dan Burn pulled up injured with seconds remaining of the first half and with no obvious left back replacement, Potter instead decided to abandon his back four in favour of reverting to a back three.
More than a few eyebrows were raised at the identity of the wing backs. Gross was moved out to the right and 6’1 Swiss target man Andi Zeqiri introduced for some rare Premier League minutes on the left.
Brighton now had two individuals playing very much out-of-position in a must-not-lose game. You had to wonder if Potter had been swigging cooking sherry straight from the bottle, ala Mark McGhee at St Mary’s 15 years earlier who started Florent Chaigneau in goal, Kerry Mayo in midfield, gave debuts to teenagers Joel Lynch and Joe Gatting and threw Leon Knight off the bus in in the middle of the New Forest.
Unlike McGhee on that occasion, Potter’s decision making proved to be spot on. Southampton were flummoxed by the changes and 11 minutes into the second half Trossard scored what proved to be the winner, having spent much of the first half doing nothing other than wandering around looking like a vampire.
The Belgian though possesses that capability of going from being completely ineffective to a match winner quicker than you can say Count Dracula.
His opportunity came after some lovely build up play. Veltman found Lallana who glided forward with the ball before spotting a gap through which to find Welbeck.
Dat Guy needed just one touch to open up the Saints defence with a layoff straight into the path of Trossard, who sent Fraser Forster the wrong way when smashing a one-on-one past the Southampton goalkeeper with power and precision.
Brighton now had over 30 minutes to hold on. Given that aforementioned record of throwing away points from winning positions in 2020-21, nobody was holding their breath but thanks to Sanchez bouncing back impressively from his error in the first match of March against Leicester, the Albion saw out the game.
Sanchez’s best intervention came with an excellent save from Che Adams as Southampton took an even bigger hold on proceedings. To counter that, Potter made another pivotal change when introducing Davy Propper in place of Welbeck.
A midfield of Lallana, Propper and Yves Bissouma suddenly gave Brighton three players capable of putting their foot on the ball, slowing the game down and giving the Albion a semblance of control as the Saints poured forward in an attempt to find an equaliser.
That never arrived and it finished Southampton 1-2 Brighton. Premier League survival still looked a long way off seeing as it was only the middle of March, but those three points turned out to be the ones that guaranteed mathematical safety for Brighton in 2020-21.
Having masterminded a rare win along the South Coast, Potter now needed to find a way to beat a fellow side in the bottom half of the Premier League at the Amex.
Not since a 2-0 win over Plucky Little Bournemouth in December 2019 had the Albion defeated opponents from outside the top seven at home, a result of their inability to break down teams who sat deep and played on the counter.
For the visit of Newcastle United, Potter took inspiration from the 1920s and reverted to a W-M formation using split strikers. Maupay and Welbeck were positioned out on the wings with Trossard bursting from deep into the open space through the middle.
Potter tucked the two wing backs inside so that they were almost operating as central midfielders. This made the most of the skillsets of Gross and Jakub Moder – making his full Premier League debut – who would otherwise not have been obvious choices for those wide roles.
The result was a comprehensive 3-0 win over the Toon with all the goals coming as a direct result of Potter’s whacky shape. Newcastle’s defenders did not know whether to get dragged out wide by Welbeck and Maupay, nor how to pick up Trossard when he came charging into the wide open spaces created by the Albion having no obvious central figureheads to their attacks.
Moder should have netted twice inside the first three minutes. His first effort saw him fire a volley over the bar and towards Woodingdean after Ben White had marauded into the final third and his second chance drew a decent stop from Martin Dubravka.
It looked like Newcastle would make it to the break level until Trossard struck on the stroke of half time. Veltman hit a long ball out of defence which Trossard latched onto in one of those pockets of space he was having so much joy finding.
There still did not seem much on but Trossard turned and swept a stunning effort from a full 25 yards into the opposite corner of Dubravka’s net, setting the Albion on their way.
Goal number two arrived early in the second half and within 60 seconds of Ryan Fraser hitting the post with Newcastle’s only effort of the evening.
Brighton collected the loose ball and swept up the other end, where Gross switched the play to find Welbeck hugging the left hand touchline.
Dat Guy cut inside and just like Trossard before him, hit a low effort again from 25 yards which ended up in the opposite corner of the Toon goal.
Having spent most of 2020-21 too scared to shoot from outside the box, Brighton now had two goals in the space of 15 March minutes from distance.
Maupay put things to bed with the Albion’s third on 68 minutes via another fine move. Welbeck drifted into a central position to win possession, feeding Gross out on the right.
One Gross Turn later and Paul Dummett was left in a confused heap, giving Gross the space he needed to deliver a low ball into the box which Maupay rifled home emphatically.
And that was that. A brilliant Brighton performance summed up by the fact that Sanchez in goal completed more successful passes than any Newcastle player. How is that for a statistic?
Although March saw Trossard became the first (and only) Brighton player nominated for a Premier League award in the 2020-21 season, the outstanding Lallana ended up winning our WAB Player of the Month Award for a string of performances which drew comparisons to Vicente.
Praise for an Albion player does not come any higher than that, but it was richly deserved as Lallana was was playing football from a different planet compared to his teammates – just as the Spanish playmaker had done a decade before him.
March was not quite done with the full time whistle against Newcastle either as the final international break of the 2020-21 saw history made with a Brighton player scoring against England for the first ever time.
Moder was the man writing his name into the history books, equalising for Poland after Harry Kane had put the hosts into the lead at Wembley.
Although a late Harry Maguire header ensured that England picked up a 2-1 victory, Moder and his teammates took plenty of plaudits for their showing.
Seeing a Brighton player make headlines on the international stage was an apt way to end a March which was arguably the best month of the Albion’s 2020-21 campaign.
March 2021 record: P3 W2 D0 L1 F6 A3
Results: 1-2 v Leicester (H), 2-1 v Southampton (A), 3-0 v Newcastle (H)
League position at the end of the month: 16th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Adam Lallana
