Vote for your WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month for October 2019
September 2019 wasn’t great for Brighton. Just two Premier League points collected and only one goal scored. So lacklustre were the majority of the first team squad that our Player of the Month award was won by 17-year-old Haydon Roberts, who only played in the 3-1 Carabao Cup defeat to Aston Villa.
October though couldn’t have been more different. A 3-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur and a dramatic 3-2 success against Everton suggested that the Albion are beginning to truly adapt to the demands of Potterball, moving four points clear of the relegation zone in the process.
You could even make a very strong case that it should have been three wins out of three. We were in complete control away at Aston Villa until Aaron Mooy managed to pick up two brain-dead yellow cards in the space of five minutes with the Albion 1-0 ahead.
Even down to 10 men, the visitors were still the better side and it looked good for a point until Matt Targett popped up with an undeserved winner in the 95th minute.
The catalyst behind the upturn in form seems to have been Graham Potter’s decision to move away from 3-4-3 in favour of a 4-2-2-2 formation.
This month’s shortlist features a number of players who have benefited from the change. Dan Burn‘s switch to left back has seen him turn into a six foot seven version of Roberto Carlos galloping up the field at every opportunity.
Dale Stephens has been able to dictate the play from a deeper midfield role as one of the holding two with Steve Alzate excelling alongside him.
You shouldn’t need any reminding of Pascal Gross’ stats, but here they are anyway – only five players in the Premier League have created more chances than the German so far this season. His productivity seems to have doubled since being deployed as traditional number 10 rather than as one of the wider players in a front three.
And then we come to the Albion’s strike force. Neal Maupay and Aaron Connolly have struck up quite the partnership over the course of October, each registering two goals but more importantly proving to be absolute menaces to every defence they’ve come across.
Steve Alzate
We saw his raw talent in September and in October, we’ve glimpsed his versatility. He’s been excellent alongside Stephens as one of the two holding midfielders in a 4-2-2-2 and then showed his ability out wide in the win over Everton when Potter switched to 3-4-3.
Dan Burn
Most observers would have thought that Potter’s switch to a back four would spell the end of Burn’s involvement in the starting XI as Adam Webster and Lewis Dunk would become the preferred central defensive duo. What’s actually happened though is that the ex-Wigan defender has become the tallest full back in the Premier League, delivering a series of performances in which he has become a rampaging tour-de-force going forward – none more so than when playing his part in the latter winner against Everton.
Aaron Connolly
Talk about a way to make your full debut in the Premier League. He earned rave reviews with a brace in the 3-0 victory over Spurs as a defence that made the Champions League final five months previously found him genuinely unplayable. That was followed by his first senior caps for the Republic of Ireland and his contribution against Everton seems to have gone under the radar a bit as he earned the free kick which Gross scored from and the penalty which Maupay converted, giving him an October haul of two goals and two assists.
Pascal Gross
Brighton’s most creative player this season by some distance and yet there are still some Albion fans who don’t rate him. We wrote about that earlier in October in our Pascal Gross and the Instagram generation article and the playmaker’s form has been superlative throughout the month. He claimed assists against Spurs and Villa and scored a fantastic free kick against Everton in probably his best month since the 2017-18 season.
Neal Maupay
The French forward was always likely to need a few months to adapt to the pace of the Premier League after stepping up from Brentford and October was the month in which he really announced himself on the scene. He scored against Spurs and Everton, taking his tally for the season to four top goals in 10 games – more than Jurgen Locadia and Florin Andone managed in the whole of last season. It may still be early days, but so far the signs are that he will turn out to be £20m well spent.
Dale Stephens
Stephens has long been seen as Brighton’s water carrier, a player who did all the unglamorous yet necessary work. That’s probably why he was so underrated by a significant section of supporters. Since Potter has arrived though, he’s undergone something of a reinvention, being allowed to use the full range of his abilities to become one of the Albion’s main creative outlets. He was outstanding at Villa in particular and the perfectly weighted through ball that he played to set Burn on his way in the lead up to the winner against Everton was a thing of beauty.
Poll closes at 8pm on Sunday 3rd November
