Match Preview: Brighton v Norwich City

It’s amazing what one win can do, isn’t it? Before last weekend’s dramatic victory over Everton, results hadn’t really matched performances for Brighton in the 2019-20 Premier League season.

As a result, the Albion were hovering perilously close to the relegation zone. We knew deep down that there could only be so many weeks in which we came away from games saying “but we deserved more” before the pressure began cranking up on Graham Potter as a trapdoor to the Championship began creaking open.

Now though we’ve hit the dizzy heights of 14th spot. A second consecutive home game against another struggling side in Norwich City represents a big opportunity to put a little daylight between ourselves and the bottom three.

Getting a fortuitous win when we haven’t played well for the first time under Potter feels like a turning point. Back it up with another three points against Norwich we’ll go into next Sunday’s trip to out-of-form Manchester United flying. It’s therefore another big afternoon at the Amex.

A brief history of Norwich City
The original Norwich City were formed in 1902 and spent their early years playing in the Southern League. That was until World War I came along and with spiralling debts, City went into voluntary liquidation in 1917. They were reformed in 1919 once the conflict was over, playing their home games in a disused chalk pit known as the Nest up until 1935.

A quick Google search of the Canaries’ former home reveals what a bloody fantastic place that must have been to watch football, with a pitch quite literally in the middle of the pit and rickety old stands built into the chalk all around it.

Sadly, the Football Association forced them to leave the Nest due to safety concerns and so they arrived at Carrow Road, their current home. They lifted their first major trophy in 1962, winning the League Cup as a second tier side before reaching the top flight for the first time in 1972.

Since then, Norwich have spent their time by-and-large in the top two divisions. They were shock title contenders in the 1992-93 season, challenging Aston Villa and Manchester United to become the first champions since Sky Sports invented football.

This challenge ultimately fell away towards the end of the campaign as they finished in third spot, but that did take them into the UEFA Cup for the following season where they memorably became the first ever British side to win away against Bayern Munich.

Norwich City this season
Nobody fancied Norwich to do much in the Championship last season, so it came as something of a surprise as Daniel Farke led the Canaries to the title and an unexpected promotion to the Premier League. They did so with a real commitment to attacking football, an approach that Farke and the Norwich fan base gloatingly said they would stick to in the top flight.

Celebrity fan Jake Humphrey in particular was full of it, stating on Twitter everyone should appreciate what a breath of fresh air City would be compared to the Albion under Chris Hughton, who just tried to defend their way to safety by boring everyone to death.

What Humphrey hasn’t appreciated is that you can’t just go into the Premier League and try and outplay teams. Virtually every promoted side needs to consolidate in the top flight before they can go and play this wonderful, entertaining football that Farke and his players had lit up the Championship with.

After all, the Albion scored close to 200 goals in two seasons under Hughton in the second tier prior to winning promotion.

City are finding that out the hard way. Aside from beating Manchester City at Carrow Road, they’ve only won one of their other league fixtures so far – an early season win against Newcastle United.

Head-to-head
Given that it took until the 1970s for both Norwich and the Albion to enter the top flight, we have been regular opponents across the second and third tiers throughout the years. There have been 90 meetings to date with Brighton winning 30, Norwich winning 33 and 24 draws, making it all rather even. The vast majority of those games came in Division Three South, with the Canaries and the Seagulls doing battle for 14 consecutive seasons between 1920 and 1934.

Last six meetings
• Norwich City 2-0 Brighton (Championship, 21/04/17)
• Brighton 5-0 Norwich City (Championship, 29/10/16)
• Brighton 0-1 Norwich City (Championship, 03/04/15)
• Norwich City 3-3 Brighton (Championship, 22/11/14)
• Brighton 1-2 Norwich City (League One, 13/02/10)
• Norwich City 4-1 Brighton (League One, 24/11/09)

Victories against Norwich in recent times have been rare for the Albion. We’ve won just three of the past 12 meetings, failing to score in five of those. That may have something to do with the fact that only once in the six seasons in which we’ve met have Brighton finished above Norwich in the league.

Team news
Graham Potter has no new fresh fitness concerns ahead of the Canaries visit, with long-term injury victims Bernardo and Jose Izquierdo still on the sidelines. It doesn’t sound like we’ll be seeing Izquierdo anytime soon either – Potter said in his pre-game press conference on Thursday that he was “hopefully Jose might play before the end of the season”.

We wrote last month about how the particular knee problem that Izquierdo is suffering with has a history of significantly shortening and even ending careers. Judging by Potter’s comments, it’s an article that unfortunately looks like being scarily accurate.

Back to matters in hand though and Aaron Mooy is available for selection after suspension while Leandro Trossard will be knocking on the door following his Man of the Match cameo in the final 24 minutes from the bench against Everton.

Where you fit either of those in, goodness knows. Steve Alzate would appear the most vulnerable as the junior member of the Albion midfield but he was outstanding last week and it would be harsh in the extreme to drop him in the same week he’s been called up to the senior Colombia squad for the first time.

It will also be intriguing as to what Potter does formation wise. Everton became the first team this season to exploit the one glaring weakness in 4-2-2-2 as they overloaded the wide areas to give Martin Montoya and Dan Burn a torrid time. The game was only won after a switch back to 3-4-3. Which shape will it be?

Norwich City’s key players
Teemu Pukki took all the early season plaudits as the Finnish striker lit up the Premier League in the opening weeks of the campaign. He plundered six goals in his first five games but hasn’t hit the back of the net since mid-September, although we all know that if there is one club an out-of-form striker can rediscover his shooting boots against, then it’s normally the Albion.

More important than Pukki to the Canaries’ chances of success is ex-Brighton goalkeeper Tim Krul. Anyone who watched the highlights of City’s match with Manchester United last weekend would have seen the Dutchman make a string of astonishing saves and he will arrive at the Amex with a point of sorts to prove given that he didn’t play a single minute of league football during his season with the Albion.

That was of course to do with the brilliance of Maty Ryan throughout the 2017-18 campaign. Krul was an excellent professional in providing backup to Ryan throughout that campaign by all accounts, performing admirably when called upon in the FA Cup. It’s good to see him back in the top flight as a number one.

A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Norwich City at home
When Norwich came to the Amex in October 2016, it was meant to be a real test of the Albion’s promotion credentials. The Canaries were highly fancied for promotion themselves, and there was the added intrigue of Hughton taking on his former club and a fan base who seemed to hold a real grudge against him.

In the end, it wasn’t even a contest. Brighton were breathtaking in sweeping aside Norwich 5-0 and all those visiting supporters who’d spent the week leading up to the game labelling Hughton as a defensive, boring and negative manager suddenly looked very stupid. Luckily, it’s a long old journey back to East Anglia so they had plenty of time to get that egg off their faces.

A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Norwich City at home
There was nothing good about Good Friday 2015. Norwich came to the Amex and won 1-0, plunging the Albion further into the relegation mire. Luckily, it was a game that the WeAreBrighton.com team can recall little about. We’d made the schoolboy error of going to Oceana the previous night, rolling in at 5am on Friday morning and going straight back to the pub after a few hours sleep. A rough hangover on Saturday was the result.

Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Norwich City
Ian Culverhouse was old enough to draw a pension when Brian Horton signed him a few weeks into the 1998-99 season – and yet he was arguably the biggest catalyst behind the Albion’s transformation from a side who had finished second from bottom of the Football League for two seasons running and into one challenging for the top six in Division Three.

From the moment Culverhouse arrived and Horton began using him as a sweeper, the Albion started to climb the table. He was a cool, calm customer who soon inherited the armband and is one of the only Brighton players that we can recall who has played for the club with naturally grey hair.

He also had a brilliant song to the tune of ‘Our House’ by Madness: “Culverhouse, in the middle of defence.” Oh for some creativity like that on the terraces these days rather than “DER DER DER, < insert random players name here >”

What we like about Norwich
They’ve had a fantastic board of directors made up of C-List celebrities. Deliah Smith is one of their owners, occasionally getting pissed on cooking sherry and making inspiring “LET’S BE ‘AVVVVINNNGGG YOOUUUUU” speeches on the Carrow Road pitch at half time.

Ed Balls meanwhile was the club’s chairman up until 2018, adding another role to an impressive CV which reads Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Strictly Come Dancing contestant and bloke who didn’t know how to use the search function on Twitter and so inadvertently tweeted his own name.

Prediction
For all the undoubted confidence that is running through the Albion camp, we’re still yet to win back-to-back games under Potter. Playing it safe, we’ll predict a 1-1 draw.