Brighton & Hove Albion 2021-22 Season Review: May
May, glorious May… Brighton ended their 2021-22 season with two Amex wins and a point on the road, results which propelled them to their highest ever finish in English football of ninth.
The month began with not only the best win of the campaign, but quite possibly the best win of the Albion’s 121 year existence. We are of course referring to Brighton 4-0 Manchester United.
It is hard to put into words just what a ridiculous score line this was. The Albion had won only three home matches all season and none in 2022.
Their previous success had been a 2-0 win over Brentford in front of around 12,000 fans when Sky Sports helpfully decreed the game must kick off at 8pm on Boxing Day.
Wins were not the only thing which had been in short supply. Just 12 goals had been scored by the men in blue and white in 1530 minutes of Premier League football. Against United, Brighton racked up a quarter of that total in an hour.
It was no fluke, either. The Albion were utterly dominant, to the point that Ralf Rangnick – who once managed Southwick in the County League – threw on England centre back Harry Maguire as an immediate response to the fourth hitting the back of the net. United were in damage control against little old Brighton. Let that sink in.
Fresh from being voted as WAB Player of the Month for April, Moises Caicedo got the party started with 15 minutes on the clock.
United could not clear their lines, the ball falling to Caicedo on the edge of the box. Moises parted a red sea of shirts, drilling a crisp low drive through a crowd of players and into the bottom corner of David De Gea’s goal.
Danny Welbeck lobbed just over after a huge punt over the top from Robert Sanchez caught out the visiting defence.
The closest United came to levelling in the first half was when Cristiano Ronaldo lined up a free kick in a decent position. In a moment which summed up the Red Devils’ evening, the ball flew absolutely nowhere near the Albion goal.
Three Brighton goals from a rampant Albion in the space of the first 15 minutes of the second half took the game away from United.
Marc Cucurella opened his Brighton account with the second four minutes after the restart when sweeping a Leandro Trossard pull-back into the top corner from 12 yards.
Cucurella burst into tears of joy at his first Premier League goal in front of the North Stand because it meant so much to him. What a player and what a man.
The Spaniard was involved in the third eight minutes later. Sanchez sent a long ball forward to Cucurella. He found Trossard who worked it inside to Pascal Gross.
Kaiser Pascal was coolness personified, dancing his way past £42 million defender Raphael Varane before stroking into the back of the United net.
Three minutes later and it was four. Gross played in Welbeck who dinked over De Gea. Although Diogo Dalot managed to get back and clear Dat Guy’s effort off the line, he only succeeded in smashing the ball into Trossard to bundle home.
“WE WANT FIVE!” was the cry from the Amex, along with “How shit must you be, we’re winning at home!” In a sign of how bad things had become for United, their supporters let off a flare to celebrate Maguire’s introduction as they knew there was no hope of igniting it to mark a Red Devils goal.
United’s humiliation was completed when Gross embarrassed Fred on the touchline in front of the West Stand.
A double Gross Turn followed by a backheel up the line left the visiting midfielder utterly bamboozled, as his teammates had been all afternoon by a destructive Albion display.
When the final whistle blew, it felt like we had been treated to the sort of experience you only normally get when buying magic mushrooms off a random bloke in the Shangri-La area of Glastonbury.
It was an evening that will be talked about forever more by those were lucky enough to be present at the Amex to witness it. And it paved the way for two more fine results in May to round off a record-breaking 2021-22 for Brighton.
Eight days later came the trip to The Leeds United. Despite having finished runners up in the 1996 Coca Cola Cup and being the biggest club in the world (miles bigger than Brighton), Leeds had spent the 2021-22 campaign battling against relegation and were in desperate need of three points as May ticked by.
That made the trip to a raucous Elland Road more difficult than a lot of Albion fans appreciated. To come away with a 1-1 draw was therefore a decent result for Brighton.
This was a game that could have gone either way. The Albion missed a hatful of chances at one end whilst relying on man-of-the-match Sanchez to make a series of sensational saves at the other before he was finally beaten in the 92nd minute.
Welbeck continued his good run of May form by opening the scoring with his fifth Brighton goal of 2021-22 midway through the first half.
Yves Bissouma was the architect, showcasing everything good about his game. He won back possession just outside the Brighton box, surging 50 yards up the pitch with the ball.
Bissouma then played a perfectly weighted, defence splitting pass to Welbeck. Dat Guy found himself in one-on-one with Ilan Meslier, producing a cool and clinical dinked finish over the Peacocks goalkeeper.
Defence was turned into attack in the space of under 30 seconds and Elland Road suddenly became much quieter.
Leeds were hanging onto their Premier League status by their fingernails amid chants of “Sack the Board” and the name of FIFA World Coach of the Year candidate Marcelo Bielsa being sung.
Bielsa’s replacement Jesse Marsch had a big half time team talk to deliver. Whatever he said at the interval – and hopefully it was just shouting FIGHT AND WIN, FIGHT AND WIN, FIGHT AND WIN over and over – worked as Leeds were much improved after the break.
Games between Brighton and Leeds at Elland Road are notorious for late goals; from Alan Navarro, Leonardo Ulloa and Bobby Zamora for the Seagulls to Luke Murphy and Robert Snodgrass for the Peacocks.
Pascal Struijk added his name to the list 120 seconds into injury time. Joe Gelhardt led Lewis Dunk on a merry dance and when the Brighton captain went to ground, the Leeds forward hung up a cross to the back post.
6’3 Strujik was being marked by 5’4 Tariq Lamptey, which needless to say was a complete mismatch. If Lamptey had been allowed a box to stand on, he still would have struggled to beat the Austrian in the air and so Struijk had the simple task of heading home to make it Leeds 1-1 Brighton.
Leeds would go onto secure their Premier League status by winning at Brentford on the final day. Brighton meanwhile hosted West Ham United in their last game of May, a fixture incorrectly viewed by a number of pundits as being a dead rubber to finish the 2021-22 season for the Albion.
A congested middle of the table actually meant that there were seven different finishing positions up for grabs between eighth and 14th. Not only were the Albion chasing their highest ever placing, but there was a difference in prize money of £13.2 million.
The Hammers also had plenty to play for; victory could potentially take them into the Europa League rather than the Europa Conference.
Their recent record against the Albion suggested that would be a tall order having failed to beat Brighton in nine previous Premier League meetings.
Nothing is certain in life but death, taxes and the Albion not losing to West Ham. For much of the first half, it looked like the Hammers would make that phrase redundant as they took the lead and were good value for it via Michail Antonio scoring a blistering goal on 40 minutes.
Antonio escaped the attentions of Dunk and Adam Webster a little too easily before turning on the edge of the box and smashing an unstoppable effort past Sanchez and into the top corner.
Declan Rice had run the game in the opening 45 minutes with Bissouma struggling to get close to the England international.
Bissouma departed with illness at half time, meaning that man marking duty of Rice fell to Caicedo. In a hugely promising sign for the future given Bissouma’s sale to Spurs, Caicedo was superb in the role and Rice became much less of an influence as Brighton came from behind to win.
Joel Veltman provided an equaliser five minutes after the restart. Gross sent in a cross which Solly March laid back to the Flying Dutchman who had come rampaging forward from right back.
Veltman subsequently produced a clinical finish, catching Fabianski by surprise at his near post. A timely moment for the right back to score his first goal of 2021-22 in a month of May which also saw him go viral for uploading a video to Instagram of himself rescuing a seagull stuck in the chimney of his Brighton & Hove home using nothing but a pair of oven gloves.
Brighton took the lead for the first time with 10 minutes left. Welbeck and Enock Mwepu played a nice little one-two to feed Gross on the edge of the box.
There seemed little prospect of the German getting a shot away and one can only imagine how angry Graham Potter was at Brighton fans shouting SHOOT.
Gross though took a touch, turned and listened to the urgings of the crowd by firing an effort into the same top corner Antonio had picked out an hour earlier.
It was a brilliant goal from a player given a brilliant reception during the post-game lap of honour. “Pascal Gross we want you to stay” sung the Amex crowd. Two more years of Gross is something to be excited about.
Gross was not done there, either. 12 minutes later and he floated over a trademark precision corner which Welbeck rose highest to head home and make it Brighton 3-1 West Ham.
Ninth place belonged to the Albion, whose rewriting of the history books was not just restricted to soaring higher than ever before.
In 2021-22, Brighton won more top flight games and scored more top flight goals than in any other season – helped by the eight plundered in three May matches.
They had their best ever top flight away campaign. They lost fewer games than in any other top flight season and conceded the lowest number of goals.
Making all this even more remarkable were the two winless streaks the Albion went on in autumn and then spring.
11 games without a victory between September and December and six defeats in a row through February and March were a far cry from the form shown in April and May as Brighton ended the 2021-22 season in glorious fashion.
If Potter can find a way to avoid such sequences and improve the Seagulls’ home record in 2022-23, then the Albion could scale even greater heights next season. These are exciting times to be a Seagull.
May 2022 record: P3 W2 D1 L0 F8 A2
Results: 4-0 v Man United (H), 1-1 v The Leeds United (A), 3-1 v West Ham (H)
League position at the end of the month: 9th
WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month: Pascal Gross
