Jurgen Locadia’s best Brighton moments

And so it ends. After 20 pretty inglorious months, Jurgen Locadia’s Brighton career appears to have come to a close as he has moved on a season long loan to Bundesliga club Hoffenheim.

Locadia rocked up at the Amex in the January 2018 transfer window from PSV Eindhoven for a then-club record fee of £14m. He may have scored on his debut against the might of League Two Coventry City in the FA Cup, but more concerning that day was the number of simple chances he wasted against a side from three divisions lower.

A goal against Swansea City on his first Premier League appearance from the substitutes bench followed, but that was about as good as it got for Locadia.

Still, contrary to popular belief, his signing wasn’t a complete waste of time and money. After all, The Dutchman did give us plenty of entertainment during his time in a Brighton shirt, even if hardly any of it involved scoring the goals he was being paid to deliver.

Here are our favourite moments of Locadia’s Albion career.

Telling The Argus he didn’t like heading a ball
When Locadia was signed, it was presumably with a view to replacing Glenn Murray. Now, Murray is a very specialist type of player. He’s a target man who brings others into play and scores his fair share of goals using his head.

That’s what made Locadia’s admission two months after his arrival to The Argus that not only did he not like heading the ball, but he was rubbish at it particularly startling. Where on earth does a striker who doesn’t want to use his head fit into a 4-4-1-1 formation?

Still, at least he was honest. He even went so far as to say that if one simple header he’d missed away at Manchester United in the 2-0 FA Cup Quarter Final defeat had fallen to Leonardo Ulloa instead, then Ulloa would have scored it. Which is just what you want to hear from your record buy.

Subbing himself off away at AFC Wimbledon
A pre-season friendly with AFC Wimbledon in the summer of 2018 should have given Locadia the chance to build up some much-needed confidence ahead of his first full season in the Premier League. Instead, he ended up being so terrible that he subbed himself off.

Chris Hughton clearly wanted to get Locadia in the goals. That’s why he lined up a supply line of Pascal Gross, Solly March and Anthony Knockaert against League One opposition.

Those three played their parts in creating opportunity after opportunity for Locadia, but everything he hit was either high or wide. One effort in particular provided a spectacular miss as a March ball in was met with a snapshot that cleared the crossbar, the stand and possibly the Atlantic Ocean.

After dragging shot number 17 of the afternoon wide early in the second half, Locadia went down under minimal contact from a Will Nightingale challenge, hitting the deck. He immediately signalled to the bench that he wanted to come off.

It was rather like watching a jockey pull up a horse that it knows isn’t going to win. Except in this case, that horse was a £14m football player.

Falling over his own leg away at Southampton
Two months on from that horror show at the Cherry Red Records Stadium and Locadia had the chance to open his Premier League account for the 2018-19 campaign away at Southampton.

Having gone 2-0 down to the Saints, Hughton had belatedly released the handbrake, thrown on Locadia and Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Brighton were now all over their hosts as they desperately sought a way back into the game.

With around 15 minutes remaining, Locadia found himself galloping through the Southampton defence. There were options left, options right and a clear sight of goal. So what did he do? Fall over his own leg.

Still, his new album was released on iTunes a few days later. Who cares about scoring goals for the club paying your wages when you can release some banging tunes on the internet?

Putting a free header off target from six yards out away at Burnley
Fast forward another three months and a toothless Albion display looked set to result in a 1-0 defeat away at fellow strugglers Burnley.

That was until a free header fell to Locadia in the closing stages. He was six yards out, front and centre of the goal with only Joe Hart to beat.

Somehow, he contrived to not even get it on target, instead heading over the bar with the goal gaping. Which led to our favourite Locadia photo, the one of his gloved hand covering his eyes and a look of grimace etched across his face, as if he couldn’t believed it had happened again. We could Jurgen, we could.

Hughton’s switch to 4-3-3
One of the arguments that Locadia’s backers make – yes, there are still some who haven’t been sectioned yet – is that he was never used in his correct position. They blame Chris Hughton for the fact that Locadia has been an abject failure.

But that is bollocks. At PSV, he was used either on the left of a front three or through the middle. There’s a strong argument to be had that the player who benefited more than anybody from Hughton’s switch from 4-4-1-1 to 4-3-3 was Locadia. He went from having no role in a formation to the formation being changed to one that played perfectly to his strengths.

Which is ridiculous when you think about. We’re not suggesting that Hughton changed shape purely to try and accommodate Locadia – nobody knows why he did it – but can you imagine if that was the reason? Two wins from 18 games later and Hughton receives his P45 because he tried to get the best out of a terrible player. Amazing.

The free kick away at Leicester City
We were quite good at set pieces last season. Shane Duffy and Lewis Dunk were constant threats to the opposition whenever they trundled forward for corners and free kicks, and so you can imagine the worry that the Leicester City defence must have had when the Albion drew a foul 30 yards from goal in a position from which a dangerous delivery could be provided.

Except that dangerous delivery never came. Instead, we had Locadia and bloody Gaetan Bong stood over the ball, with Locadia eventually taking the strange decision of opting to shoot. You don’t need us to tell you the result.

Hitting the post from six yards against Southampton
It’s pretty apt that Locadia’s last appearance in a Brighton shirt was comically bad. It came in the 2-0 defeat at the Amex to Southampton and there were two highlights in particular.

The first came just a few minutes after Locadia had been introduced. An outrageous 30 yard pass from Davy Propper found him perfectly in a fair bit of space just inside the box.

Locadia only needed to bring it down and try and get a shot away but unfortunately, his attempts at a basic piece of control taught to most five-year-old school children resulted in the ball bouncing so far off him that it was last seen in a Worthing postcode.

Even better was to come when he had a glorious chance to equalise when the ball found him in acres of space at the back post. All he had to do was get an effort on target and out of the reach of Angus Gunn but instead, he decided to smash the ball as hard as possible against the post from six yards.

Classic Locadia. Thanks for the memories. And the music.