Brighton & Hove Albion 2020-21 Season Review: May
Brighton & Hove Albion saved the best till last when it came to their 2020-21 campaign as May saw them secure Premier League football for a record-breaking fifth successive season and pick up the greatest result of the Amex era by winning 3-2 against champions Manchester City.
Pep Guardiola lost his mind at the full time whistle and he was not the only one sent into a hissy fit by the Albion. Fans of 1996 Coca Cola Cup runners up The Leeds United could not believe it either when the opening match of May saw the biggest club in world football lose to a small team like Brighton for the second time in the 2020-21 season.
If you listened to the pundits on Amazon Prime after Brighton 2-0 Leeds, you could have been mistaken for thinking that the Albion were lucky to catch their visitors on an off-day.
This completely ignored the fact that it was Brighton playing so well that made Leeds look so poor. Marcelo Bielsa had no answer tactically to Graham Potter, Robert Sanchez hardly had a save to make and if Leandro Trossard and Neal Maupay had been more clinical, the Albion could have won by four or five. So biased were Amazon towards the Peacocks that I went direct to Currys for a new kettle two weeks later.
At the heart of Brighton’s victory over the Peacocks was Danny Welbeck. Dat Guy earned a first half penalty when Ezgjan Alioski took an unorthodox approach to defending by grabbing the ankles of Welbeck in the box, leaving referee Chris Kavanagh with an easy decision to make.
Of course, being awarded a spot kick was no guarantee of a goal when it came to Brighton in the 2020-21 season. Maupay, Welbeck, Trossard, Yves Bissouma and Pascal Gross had all missed from 12 yards over the course of the campaign.
It was Gross whose key came out the bowl for this one and although Leeds goalkeeper Illan Meslier went the right way, the German’s effort was tucked just too far into the corner for Meslier to reach.
Welbeck himself grabbed the second to wrap up victory in the final 10 minutes. Leeds made a bit of a hash out of clearing under pressure from Maupay and as the ball dropped down from the sky, Dat Guy produced a stunning Gross Turn to take him away from his marker and create a bit of space to work with.
There was still much for Welbeck to do, but do it he did with a ferocious effort driven across Meslier and into the far corner. No other Brighton player could have produced a piece of skill followed by a finish like that and it was enough to win Welbeck the WAB Goal of the Season award.
Welbeck was not the only one pulling off outrageous skills against Leeds. Gareth Southgate cannot have a Prime subscription as if he did, he would not have been able to ignore Lewis Dunk’s claims for a spot in England’s Euro 2020 squad following the Brighton captain’s chest back to Robert Sanchez.
A dangerous looking cross came into the box but Dunk was completely unphased, simply chesting the ball towards his own goal and straight into the arms of Sanchez.
Normally if a Brighton defender tried something like that, 999,999 times out of a million it ends up being a comical own goal. To have the confidence to pull it off with the Albion only 1-0 ahead in a must-win game was different class.
Less impressive was Dunk’s red card a week later as Brighton suffered their first ever defeat at the hands of Wolves when going down 2-1 at Molineux. The Albion had enjoyed an excellent first half and deservedly led 1-0, Dunk kick starting an interesting afternoon for himself personally by heading home a Pascal Gross corner.
Brighton should have gone into the break further ahead. Dan Burn was denied a penalty despite being rugby tackled to the ground by Morgan Gibbs-White, who was making a late case for inclusion in the British and Irish Lions squad for the summer series in South Africa.
Rui Patricio had to pull off an outrageous save to keep another Dunk header out from a Gross corner and Adam Webster put an identical opportunity straight down the throat of the home goalkeeper.
The turning point arrived eight minutes into the second half. Sloppy play from Webster eventually led to Fabio Silva having a clear run at Sanchez’s goal until Dunk pulled the young Wolves striker back, leaving Brighton to face the final 37 minutes with only 10 men.
It was a rare moment of bad judgement from the Albion skipper. Letting Silva go one-on-one with Sanchez would have been much preferable; if Silva scored, Brighton still had nearly an entire half of football to get back into a game in which they had been dominant for much of the preceding hour or so.
And what if Silva missed? The young Wolves striker’s finishing had let him down at times in his debut Premier League season and Sanchez had proven himself a fine shot stopper since succeeding Maty Ryan as number one. Silva fluffing or Sanchez saving the chance were entirely plausible outcomes.
Potter’s response to the red card was interesting. Ben White shifted to centre back alongside Webster, Gross dropped in at right back and Alexis Mac Allister and Jakub Moder replaced Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Trossard.
The Albion now had very little leadership or experience on the pitch – Joel Veltman and Adam Lallana were both absent through injury – and no natural width at all.
Nuno appeared to realise this very quickly and so on came Adama Traore, a player who had caused Dan Burn to score an own goal, give away a penalty and pick up a booking in one of the all-time great Seagulls performances when Brighton drew 3-3 against Wolves at the Amex in January.
No prizes for guessing who got the Wolves equaliser. Traore exchanged passes with Silva in the Albion box to smash an effort past Sanchez with 13 minutes remaining.
Still, it looked like Brighton might hold on for a valuable point until the game ticked into the 90th minute when there was familiar late heartbreak.
Gibbs-White was the scorer, beating Sanchez with a shot rifled into the top corner from the left hand side of the box. To then round off a pretty miserable second half of football, Maupay was shown a straight red card after the final whistle for confronting referee Jonathan Moss with foul and abusive language.
The defeat at Wolves made it 23 points dropped from winning positions by Brighton in 2020-21 – and that record was extended to 25 points when West Ham United rocked up at the Amex in the third game of May.
For the first 80 minutes, it was an absolute snooze fest. That was until Welbeck gave the Albion the lead on 83, coolly dinking a one-on-one over Lukasz Fabianski after a brilliant through ball from the forgotten-about Percy Tau.
Brighton now needed to hold on for just seven minutes to pick up three points. They managed to stay ahead for all of 185 seconds.
Tomáš Souček delivered a cross from the right that was not convincingly cleared as Webster and White appeared to run into each other. The loose ball found Saïd Benrahma on the edge of the box and he hit a stunning curler into the top corner as it finished Brighton 1-1 West Ham.
Although the manner of the draw was disappointing, when you stepped back it was actually a decent result against a side pushing for Champions League qualification given Dunk, Maupay, Veltman, Solly March and Tariq Lamptey were all absent.
Better was to come three days later with the visit of champions Manchester City on arguably the best night in the Amex’s 10 year existence.
The May lifting of restrictions meant that 8,000 Brighton supporters could attend the final home game of the 2020-21 season. Those fans sounded more like 80,000 as the Albion completed a famous comeback to defeat Guardiola’s superstars and leave the City boss tearing his hair out.
You would have got long odds on that being the outcome when City took a very early lead. Brighton decided that the best way to welcome fans back was via a defensive catastrophe inside 180 seconds, leading to a much earlier than expected first cry of “FOR **** SAKE BRIGHTON” from one supporter who wasted no time in getting back into the swing of things.
Riyad Mahrez twisted and teased Burn before delivering a cross to the far post where Ilkay Gundogan escaped the attentions of Gross a little too easily to convert.
Six minutes later and there was the first glimpse of the difference supporters inside stadiums can make. Joao Cancelo failed to deal with an awkward bouncing ball over the top and ended up tangling with Welbeck as Dat Guy looked to bear down on Ederson’s goal.
“Off off off off” came the chant from the Brighton faithful and remarkably, referee Stuart Attwell listened to show Cancelo a straight red card.
It looked a harsh decision and you had to wonder if Mr Attwell would have dismissed Cancelo so willingly were it not for the pressure applied by those Brighton fans.
Welbeck limped off on the half hour mark with a hamstring injury, his place being taken by Trossard. This proved to be almost as big a moment as the red card as Trossard was absolutely outstanding over the next 60 minutes, causing the champions’ defence constant torment.
City would go 2-0 ahead before Trossard sparked the comeback. Phil Foden was able to escape the attentions of White for a second and that is all a player of his talent needs as a barnstorming run which started in the City half saw Foden surge away from White and Webster before smashing an unstoppable effort across Sanchez.
Trossard pulled one back with an individual goal every bit as good as Foden’s, leaving Premier League Player of the Season Rúben Dias on his arse three times when faking and faking and faking a shot before lashing past Ederson.
Incredibly, City began timewasting once Trossard had made it 2-1. The only way Ederson could have resembled Casper Ankergren anymore as he laboured to take every goal kick would have been by whipping out 20 Marlboro Light and a four pack of Carlsberg.
Watching City’s billion petrodollar squad resorting to timewasting measures against a Brighton side featuring £3.5 million Wigan man Burn and a goalkeeper who had spent the previous two seasons with Rochdale and Forest Green Rovers was surreal to say the least.
Rather wonderfully, it had absolutely no impact either as Brighton found an equaliser through a fine Webster header. The impressive Moder linked up with Gross down the right, leading Gross to deliver one of his beautiful whipped balls into the box which Webster rose like the proverbial salmon to meet. From 2-0 down against the champions to 2-2.
If that was not in the script, then what happened next was fantasy beyond even Terry Pratchett as Burn of all people hit the winner. It was the most Burn goal you could imagine too, the initial chance being met with a stumble and a trip in the box like a baby giraffe slowly tumbling to the ground after being shot with a tranquiliser dart.
Burn did manage to get a scuffed effort away which Ederson kept out. Burn then made even more of a mess out of the rebound, yet that somehow helped as the ball spun between the glove of Ederson and the leg of Oleksandr Zinchenko to make it Brighton 3-2 Manchester City.
The entertainment was not done there. At the full time whistle, Guardiola refused to shake Potter’s hand and instead stormed down the tunnel, leaving a trail of toys thrown from his pram in his wake.
Four months earlier and Guardiola had described Potter as the best English manager in the Premier League. Turns out the City manager finds it easy to be complimentary when it is January and his side have stuck nine goals past Brighton in the previous two meetings, but less so when it is May and his 2020-21 champions are being embarrassed at the Amex.
Perhaps unsurprisingly after their exertions against City, the final game of May and the 2020-21 season was something of a damp squib for Brighton as they suffered a 2-0 defeat at Arsenal.
The minds of most Albion players seemed to be on an Emirates beach rather than the Emirates Stadium. Yvess Bissouma was the notable exception, delivering another dynamic display on his way to winning both WAB May Player of the Month and our Brighton Player of the Season 2020-21 award.
Nicolas Pépé scored the goals for the Gunners, collecting Callum Chambers’ ball into the box and beating Burn and Sanchez for his first. His second came via a clinical finish through the legs of Dunk and into the far corner after Martin Ødegaard drew Burn and slipped a pass into the almighty gap vacated by the Albion left back.
Brighton registered just one shot on target on an afternoon when victory would have seen them set a new record Premier League points tally and potentially taken them as high as 13th in the table, above rivals Crystal Palace.
Instead, Brighton ended May with defeat and a 16th place finish in the 2020-21 Premier League table. For a squad with players like Sanchez, White, Webster, Dunk, Bissouma, Lallana, Welbeck and Trossard – plus Lamptey and March pre-injury – that represented something of a disappointment.
Too many points dropped from winning positions as a result of poor game management combined with a first half of the season in which the Albion won only twice from 18 matches were the reasons behind that.
If Brighton can maintain the form they showed in the second half of the campaign – helped by Potter ceasing to chop and change the starting XI every week – then eyes can be fixed up the table for 2021-22 rather than on goings on in the relegation battle.
Of course, we said exactly the same thing last summer and that makes it a rather big if at the start of the previous sentence. Hopefully, Potter learns his lessons this year.
May 2021 record: P4 W0 D2 L2 F1 A3
Results: 2-0 v The Leeds United (H), 1-2 v Wolves (A), 1-1 v West Ham (H), 3-2 v Manchester City (H), 0-2 v Arsenal (A)
League position at the end of the month: 16th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Yves Bissouma
