Match Review: Brighton 0-2 Southampton

Southampton must love playing Brighton. Before Saturday, there’d been 46 previous meetings in the Football League and the Saints had won 24 of them. The Albion – a paltry eight.

The record books will show that Southampton victory number 25 came on Saturday 24th August at the Amex Stadium. But in reality, the visitors didn’t win this game – Florin Andone lost it.

Before Andone’s brain dead challenge on Yan Valery with 29 minutes played, the Albion were completely dominant. Even playing with a man less in stifling heat we were still on top, looking for a way to win.

But once Southampton had their first shot on goal – and what a shot it was, smashed straight into the top corner by Moussa Djenepo – it was pretty much game over. And all because of one hotheaded striker.

Graham Potter told the BBC afterwards that he couldn’t defend Andone. Even OJ Simpson’s lawyer would have struggled to. The Romanian can be a complete liability at times and clearly does not possess the temperament required to be a Premier League footballer.

It’s just the latest blot on a pretty blotted copybook. Andone has played 30 times for the Albion, picked up five yellows and missed six games through suspension.

Last season he got a three match retrospective ban for trying to decapitate a West Bromwich Albion player with his elbow. Against Newcastle United at home in April he was booked within 20 minutes of a must-not-lose game and subsequently had to be hauled at half time.

He could even have been booked inside of five minutes against Southampton. Angus Gunn had come racing out of his goal and put the ball into touch, only for Andone to needlessly go through him. The only reason Kevin Friend didn’t whip out the yellow for that is that it was so early.

It’s all so obvious as well. We tweeted before the game asking how long it would be before Andone picked up an unnecessary booking for attempted murder, predicting it would take 22 minutes. We may have been seven minutes out, but the fact it ended up being a straight red made up that little inaccuracy.

Red card after 29 minutes. Absolute fucking clown https://t.co/6aiv0pYUjT

— We Are Brighton (@wearebrighton) August 24, 2019

Andone’s place in the starting lineup wasn’t without controversy itself. Over the past four-and-a-half years, we’ve become accustomed to a manager in Chris Hughton whose team selection you could often set your watch by. If the team won or played well, the players kept the shirt.

Clearly, that isn’t Potter’s style. Pascal Gross created more goal scoring opportunities than anybody else on the pitch in last week’s 1-1 draw with West Ham United and Glenn Murray claimed an assist for Leandro Trossard’s equaliser, yet both were jettisoned in favour of Andone and Neal Maupay.

Maupay looked lively in the opening 30 minutes and both he and Martin Montoya came mightily close to opening the scoring as the Albion were well on top. Both of those chances came after industrious work from Trossard who was again hugely impressive and central to most of the good stuff the Seagulls did.

It seemed a matter of when and not if Brighton made their dominance count, only for Andone to lose his mind. Bizarrely, people actually clapped him off once Mr Friend had flashed the easiest red card he’ll give all season.

We’ll never understand that. A bloke has just made a horrific tackle that could’ve broken a man’s leg, leaving us to play for over an hour with 10 men and completely ruining a brilliant start in which we’d been totally dominant and people are clapping? Just why?

Andone’s red card did at least give us our first glimpse at how Potter would react to such adversity. The answer was with positivity. There was no change in formation as the Albion stuck with what was now a 3-4-2 and looked to stay on the front foot for the remaining 15 minutes of the half.

That approach was rewarded when Lewis Dunk thought he’d scored until our old friend VAR intervened. Last week, we had to wait two minutes for a bloke in Uxbridge to tell the entire stadium that Trossard’s goal couldn’t stand because Dan Burn was a millimetre offside.

This week, the problem was the polar opposite. As Dunk’s header hit the back of the net, Gunn was lying on the ground having clearly been impeded.

Last season, Mr Friend or his assistant would have awarded the foul. There’d have been some tribal grumblings, but you’d accept the decision and get on with it.

Not with VAR though. While most of the stadium accepted that the goal wasn’t going to stand, we were still waiting an agonisingly long time with sod all information about what was going on for someone watching on television 74 miles away to confirm that, yes, Dunk’s header wouldn’t count.

To make matters worse, the official Premier League Twitter account was tweeting out that the goal had been disallowed before anyone inside of the Amex was told. Obviously, people reading on social media in the United States or Japan are more important than those of us forking out £35 to watch live.

Potter changed formations at the break, switching to a 4-3-2. The Albion weren’t quite as good, but that can probably be put down to tiredness as the effort that was going into dominating in such heat despite playing shorthanded should not be overstated.

Southampton seemed pretty content to be second-best, knowing that the pace they had on the break could punish the 10 men if they over committed.

And that’s exactly what happened 10 minutes into the second half. Burn went roaming forward from left back but the Albion lost the ball.

Shane Duffy then didn’t clear into row Z when he could’ve taken man and ball just inside the Saints half and all of a sudden, Djenepo was bending past Maty Ryan from 25 yards with his first touch after coming on.

Brighton were facing an uphill task from that point on but there were a couple of golden chances to equalise. The best of those fell to Jurgen Locadia, who undid all of his promising pre-season work with an atrocious 20 minutes.

The Dutchman was six yards out with just Gunn to beat but decided he’d smash the ball as hard as possible against the post, a miss so bad that it almost beggars belief.

Locadia had another decent half chance when an outrageous 30 yard pass from Davy Propper found him perfectly in a fair bit of space just inside the box.

All Locadia had to do was 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.

Southampton’s second arrived in stoppage time and it was again scored on the counter, Nathan Redmond sliding home at the back post to secure the three points in front of the watching Gareth Southgate.

Most Albion fans assumed that Southgate was present to check out Dunk, but based on this it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Redmond included in the England squad for next month’s games with Bulgaria and Kosovo.

Before that international break, we’ve got the small matter of a trip to Manchester City to get through. It will be intriguing to see how Potter sets up in his first test away from home against one of the big six. Will he stick with 3-4-3 or switch to 4-2-3-1?

Whatever he chooses, there will be no Andone. Hopefully, it’s some time before we see him in an Albion shirt again. Indefensible.