Brighton & Hove Albion 2020-21 Season Review: October
Following a difficult opening month to the 2020-21 Premier League season in which the fixture list threw up Chelsea and Manchester United as two of the Albion’s three opponents, October offered a chance for Brighton to turn those promising September performances against the big guns into points against a couple of the top flight’s lesser teams.
Everton at Goodison was never likely to be easy but Crystal Palace away and West Bromwich Albion at home were exactly the sort of games that the Seagulls had to be winning if Graham Potter wanted to improve on the previous campaign’s 41 points and 15th placed finish.
Two draws meant that October failed to live up to expectations on the pitch, a sign of what was to come for Brighton in the first half of 2020-21 on-the-pitch.
Off-the-pitch, the Albion embarked on something of a PR disaster by vigorously defending the Premier League’s plans to charge supporters a £15 PPV fee to watch their own team play behind closed doors in the middle of a pandemic.
The whole pay-per-view idea was a terrible one to begin with. Fans were already forking out for Sky Sports and BT Sport subscriptions and had little idea of when a refund for 2020-21 season tickets would be offered, despite it looking increasingly likely that these were going to be about as useful as the Pope’s testicles with football being played out behind closed doors.
To then be asked to pay £15 every time Brighton were not selected for normal television coverage was a step too far. If Premier League clubs could afford to fork out £1.2 billion in three months over the summer on new players, then they did not need to try and make money by charging supporters extra to watch their own team on television.
A flood of angry emails made their way towards Paul Barber’s inbox when the scheme was revealed, from which we got some astonishing quotes from the Brighton deputy chairman defending the plans.
Our favourite was: “Unfortunately, fans will always want everything for free. But we are a business.” Written by a man employed to the healthy annual salary of one million pounds, by a club who only exist today because fans consistently paid out of their pockets to keep it alive throughout the 1990s and during the Withdean era.
Supporters voted with their wallets, instead donating their £15 to local foodbanks and charities. £3912 was raised for the Brighton Foodbank from Albion fans.
Numerous other foodbanks and charities around Sussex also benefitted from money that Premier League clubs mistakenly thought would be willingly handed over to line their already rich pockets.
PPV was quietly dropped after only one month. The Premier League would rather everyone pretends it never happened, but The Streets won’t forget. After all, us Brighton fans always want everything for free.
A week before PPV and Brighton’s defending of crosses into the box at Everton was nearly as much of a debacle as being charged £15 to watch your own team play on TV.
The Toffees may have been top of the table at the time, but the Albion gifted them three points through a set piece shambles as it finished Everton 4-2 Brighton.
Two of Everton’s goals came from such scenarios. Dominic Calvert-Lewin opened the scoring with his ninth of the season, a free header at the back post from a Gylfi Sigurdsson short corner.
The Toffees’ second arrived right on the stroke of half time when Solly March gave away a cheap free kick. James Rodriguez delivered and there was Yerry Mina completely unmarked to make it 2-1.
Another problem we saw at Everton in early October that would continue to go untreated throughout the 2020-21 season was Brighton conceding immediately after they had scored themselves.
A terrible Jordan Pickford error had gifted the Albion a way back into the game when the England goalkeeper dropped the ball at the feet of Neal Maupay.
The French striker reacted quickest of anyone to slam home the loose ball as he made it four goals from four games to continue his fine start to the campaign. Little did we know then that he would only score four more over the next 34 through until May.
Four minutes separated Maupay’s Brighton equaliser and Mina putting Everton back into the lead. Seven minutes into the second half and Rodriguez made it 3-1 when finishing Alex Iwobi’s cross with a simple tap in at the back post.
Again, the defending was terrible and the move begun by Brighton being sloppy in possession, Leandro Trossard playing a loose pass to surrender the ball.
Rodriguez added his second and Everton’s fourth with 20 minutes still to play. Another straightforward goal saw Iwobi scamper down the right, he found Abdoulaye Doucoure whose low pass was rolled in by Rodriguez in an almost identical position to the Colombian’s first.
Yves Bissouma did at least manage to raise a slight smile from Albion fans watching at home as he pulled one back with a trademark stunner from distance in injury time.
The Malian’s effort was one of only three shots on target that Brighton managed all afternoon, another disappointing aspect of the performance – and a sign surely that attacking reinforcements were needed ahead of the transfer window slamming shut.
Brighton did make two signings in the final few days of the window but to the dismay of fans, neither were for the here and now. Polish duo Jakub Moder and Michal Karbownik arrived from Lech Poznan and Legia Warsaw for a combined fee of £14 million. Both were loaned immediately back to their former clubs until January.
Next up came the trip to Crystal Palace. There was an unexpected bit of good news on the morning of the game with the announcement that Brighton had signed Danny Welbeck on a free transfer following his release by Watford.
Although Welbeck was not the £30 million striker many Brighton fans had been craving, he was at least a step up on any of the Albion’s other attacking options – providing of course that the Seagulls’ medical team could keep him injury free. With no fee paid and a one-year contract heavily influenced by game time, it looked a risk free signing.
Welbeck was not fit enough to start at Selhurst Park, where rubbish refereeing combined with Brighton’s wastefulness in front of goal left the visitors relying on a last minute equaliser from Alexis Mac Allister to rescue a 1-1 draw.
Brighton had 66 percent possession, five corners and 20 shots. Only three of those efforts troubled Vicente Guaita in the Eagles’ goal, the other 17 went high or wide.
Palace meanwhile scored from their only shot on target. Wilfried Zaha (of course) converted a controversial penalty awarded after Michy Batshuayi went down as if he had been shot by a sniper from the Holmesdale End under minimal contact from the arms of Tariq Lamptey.
Man in the middle Stuart Attwell was not the only bloke at Selhurst to have an afternoon to forget. Maupay’s season took a turn for the worse as he was guilty of two astonishing misses.
The most mystifying came when he was in one-on-one with Guaita. All Maupay needed to do was put his foot through the ball and place it out of reach of the Palace goalkeeper, a relatively straightforward task you would think for a striker who had been in good nick coming into the game.
Instead, Maupay took an extra touch and tried to cut back inside. The result was two Palace players closing him down and the ball being deflected over the bar when he eventually managed to get a shot away.
It was almost like he wasn’t thinking straight. As if he had got in on goal and then realised that he might have left the oven on; that distracted him and as a result, a terrible piece of decision making had taken place.
Earlier, Maupay had brought a low cross under control, perhaps taken another unnecessary touch and then trickled a weak effort with no conviction towards the hands of Guatia. Two massive opportunities that should have been converted.
Mac Allister did at least spare the Albion’s blushes with his late leveller. The Argentine playmaker had only been on the pitch 12 minutes when he collected a pass from fellow substitute Aaron Connolly and produced a powerful drive into the bottom corner.
There was still time for a little more drama as Lewis Dunk picked up his first braindead red card for a couple of years. In a moment of madness born out of frustration, Dunk jumped into a horrible two footed lunge on Gary Cahill as a scramble from a Brighton corner came to nothing.
Watch it back in slow motion and you could see the exact moment that things boil over for Dunk and he thinks “OH **** IT” before launching into his assault, a result of being thoroughly pissed off at his side’s failure to win the game.
That indiscretion meant that Dunk missed the final Brighton game of October, West Brom coming to the Amex having failed to pick up a Premier League point on the road in 2020-21 up to that point. Needless to say, that all changed as the battle of the Albion’s ended 1-1 and left Potter with a lot of questions to answer.
The Seagulls had given an encouraging first half display against their visitors to go into the break 1-0 ahead. Maupay had (again) squandered several opportunities and although Brighton only had a comedy own goal to show for their efforts, the Baggies looked there for the taking.
What followed was an appalling second half of football, not helped by Potter’s decision to try and defend the slender lead. Brighton could not keep a clean sheet for love nor money, so why did Potter bank on his side recording a shutout to win the game – especially against a defence so questionable as West Brom’s?
Slaven Bilic’s side lined up with a 36-year-old full back at centre back and two rookie full backs. Branoslav Ivanovic made Usain Bolt look like a steam roller and yet Potter didn’t think that pace might have stretched the visiting defence in the second half.
Potter’s second half substitutions withdrew the outstanding trio of Adam Lallana, Solly March and Trossard in favour of Pascal Gross, Steve Alzate and Mac Allister.
The removal of March was particularly bizarre. He was in the best form of his life, winning the WAB Brighton October Player of the Month Award and pushing himself into shock England contention with the way he had started the 2020-21 campaign.
Brighton should have been looking to kill the game off in the second half and March was central to that, running at and stretching a tiring defence with the intention of the Albion adding a second. Potter’s changes instead opened the door for West Brom to grab an 80th minute equaliser.
Dan Burn’s poor clearing heading on halfway gave the ball to the Baggies and as Burn tried to retrieve the situation, he left a gaping gap for Callum Robinson to collect a through ball and break into.
Adam Webster flayed a leg at Robinson’s low cross, only succeeding in deflecting it into the path of Karlan Grant who took a touch, got away from Ben White a little too easily and beat Maty Ryan with a clinical finish.
West Brom manager Slaven Bilic said in his post-match interview that had the match lasted another five minutes, the likelihood is Brighton would have lost. He was right.
Our Graham meanwhile gave those playing Potter Bingo a full house with both learning and taking the positives featuring in his assessment of Brighton 1-1 West Brom.
“I thought we were the better team first half and they responded well in the second half,” said Potter. “We have to learn from the second half and take the positives from the first.” BINGO!
The trouble being of course that Brighton did not seem to learn anything throughout October, ending the second month of the 2020-21 season in 16th spot with only five points. Another relegation battle looked on the cards as autumn arrived.
October 2020 record: P3 W0 D2 L1 F4 A6
Results: 2-4 v Everton (A), 1-1 v Crystal Palace (A), 1-1 v West Brom (H)
League position at the end of the month: 16th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Solly March
