Match Preview: Brighton face Portsmouth for first time in eight years
The last time we wrote a match preview for Brighton & Hove Albion v Portsmouth, Dave Cameron was Prime Minister, Brexit was not even a word and you could still spend a Saturday night in Tru.
Eight long years have passed since that March 2012 afternoon. Pompey were in the early stages of their spiralling journey from Premier League and FA Cup winners to finding themselves in League Two as years after spending money they did not actually have caught up with them.
Brighton meanwhile were heading in the opposite direction. The Amex had just opened and top flight football was very clearly the aim. It arrived a little over five years later, by which time Pompey were scrapping to get out of the bottom tier.
The Carabao Cup has now thrown Brighton and Pompey together to renew a rivalry that although nowhere near the levels of Brighton-Palace or Portsmouth-Southampton, has been tasty at times.
There have been plenty of fiery clashes both on and off the pitch. This would have been a rare League Cup tie which would actually have been worth paying £20 to see, even if Graham Potter does name a team of kids again as he did in last season’s 3-1 third round defeat to Aston Villa.
Paul Barber must have been ripping his hair out that such an intriguing draw happened with football being played behind closed doors.
Portsmouth this season
Portsmouth have one very clear aim for the 2020-21 season and that is to climb out of League One at the fourth time of asking. Since they won the League Two title in 2016-17, Pompey have finished eighth, fourth and fifth in the third tier with the past two seasons resulting in play off semi final defeats to Sunderland in 2018-19 and Oxford United last time out.
2019-20 must have been particularly galling for Portsmouth. They were easily the biggest club in the end-of-year lottery but the play offs do not respect reputation or tradition and so their journey was ended by Oxford, who in turn were beaten by Wycombe Wanderers at Wembley.
Most clubs with a desire to win promotion might have changed their manager in a desperate attempt to alter their fortune. It is refreshing to see Pompey stick with Kenny Jackett, a sign that the basket case days in which they spent well beyond their means and rattled through a series of unsavoury owners appear to be over.
Recent form
Pompey began their league campaign on Saturday with a 0-0 home draw against Shrewsbury Town. They have played twice in cup matches so far this season; beating Colchester United in the Paint Pot and eliminating Stevenage in the first round of the Camila Cabello Cup to set up this second round meeting at the Amex.
They needed penalties to get past Alex Revell‘s League Two outfit in the previous round with Jackett using several of his back up players in the 3-3 draw at the Lamex Stadium.
Given that Pompey will fancy their chances of pulling off a shock and picking up south coast bragging rights, it seems likely that they will come to Brighton at near-full strength. The Albion could be in for a more difficult evening than they are perhaps expecting.
Brighton v Portsmouth Head-to-Head
Portsmouth and Southampton were actually considered Brighton’s main rivals in the first 30 or so years of the Albion’s existence with the clubs regular foes in the Southern League.
Once the Southern League become Division Three South of the Football League, Pompey and Southampton climbed through the divisions whilst the Albion remained rooted in the third tier.
Meetings with Pompey have been pretty infrequent ever since with 43 matches taking place since both teams joined the Football League in 1920.
This is a rare match preview where we tell you that Brighton actually have the better record in the head-to-head, winning 18 games to the 15 of Portsmouth with 10 draws thrown in.
In terms of the League Cup, we have faced off twice in the competition. Both of those matches took place in the swinging 60s, Brighton pulling off something of a shock in 1969 when defeating their higher division opponents 1-0 at the Goldstone Ground. Alex Dawson scored the only goal of the game in front of 19,787, one of the biggest crowds of the 1969-70 season.
The 1962 meeting was a far less enjoyable experience from an Albion point of view as Pompey left the Goldstone with a 5-1 victory. It was a weakened visiting team too, Portsmouth being somewhat ahead of the curve when it came to resting players in the competition as is now commonplace.
Last six meetings between Brighton and Portsmouth
• Brighton 2-0 Portsmouth (Championship, 01/01/20)
• Portsmouth 0-1 Brighton (Championship, 13/08/11)
• Brighton 3-1 Portsmouth (FA Cup third round, 08/01/11)
• Brighton 1-1 Portsmouth (Division One, 18/01/03)
• Portsmouth 4-2 Brighton (Division One, 31/08/02)
• Brighton 1-0 Portsmouth (FA Cup third round, 02/01/93)
The last six meetings between the Albion and Pompey have very much gone the way of the Seagulls. We have only lost once in that time, a 4-2 reversal at Fratton Park in August 2002 notable for the debuts of Guy Butters – who was the size of a large tug pulled straight out of the Solent – and Graham Barrett, who got sent off.
Brighton have won the past three, completing a Championship double in the 2011-12 season and triumphing in the third round of the FA Cup in 2010-11 despite Gus Poyet’s He Who Must Not Be Named’s Albion being a division below their Withdean visitors on that occasion.
The Albion have also hosted Portsmouth in top secret pre-season friendlies in the past two summers. For reasons that nobody seems able to explain, Brighton banned any media from attending and the results could not be reported under any circumstances, as if it were a classified MI6 plot to assassinate Donald Trump rather than a game of football.
Despite all Brighton’s efforts to keep what had happened under wraps, the news still leaked out that the Albion had won last month’s game 3-0 with Aaron Connolly scoring twice.
Team news
Trying to second guess a Potter team selection in a regular match preview is akin to predicting the winning national lottery numbers, let alone when he could pluck seven or eight players from the Under 12s to make up his starting line up for Brighton versus Portsmouth.
It would be seriously frustrating if he selects a side that cannot legally drink or gamble because they are too young. As we said yesterday, Potter could rest the entire XI who started against Chelsea at the weekend and still send out a team packed with Premier League quality.
Jason Steele might have to put his pint and golf clubs down to mind goal for 90 minutes. Joel Veltman is a Dutch international right back and Champions League semi finalist.
Dan Burn was one of the first names on Potter’s team sheet in 2019-20, Haydon Roberts is a highly-rated England youth international who scored Brighton’s goal against Villa last year despite being only 17. Bernardo could round off a pretty tasty back four.
Dale Stephens and Jayson Molumby is a midfield partnership featuring a bloke with over 200 Brighton games to his name and a player good enough to have made his international debut for the Republic of Ireland before his first Premier League start for the Albion.
Pascal Gross has created more big chances in Europe’s top leagues than Eden Hazard since the start of the 2016-17 season and Alexis Mac Allister is a full Argentinian international.
Deploy those two as number 10s in tandem and partner Jahanbakhsh – the third most expensive player in Brighton history – alongside Viktor Gyokeres up top. That would be a team that should have more than enough for Pompey.
Portsmouth’s danger men
Ronan Curtis was Portsmouth’s top scorer last season, notching 11 League One goals from midfield. Pompey have been blessed with excellent central defenders over the past few years – we should know given that Adam Webster and Matt Clarke are both now Albion players – and Sean Raggert will be looking to kick start his career in the same manner as those two did.
Raggert impressed on loan from Norwich City last season before moving permanently to Fratton Park for 2020-21. One of Pompey’s other defensive linchpins of the previous campaign, Christian Burgess, moved to Tony Bloom’s Belgian club Union Saint-Gilloise in the summer.
Portsmouth’s weak link
Portsmouth do not seem to score enough goals, which we know is ironic coming in a match preview written by a Brighton website. That Curtis top scored from midfield in 2019-20 explains why they fell short of automatic promotion and drawing a blank at home to Shrewsbury in the season opener points to the fact it is an issue that Jackett has not yet solved.
The betting value for Brighton v Portsmouth
It is hard to preview any betting tips for Brighton against Portsmouth when nobody knows how seriously Potter is intending to take the game.
When we saw that the majority of the team he was sending out against Villa last season had a school geography project on the River Ouse to hand in the following day, it was a no-brainer to lump on Villa to win.
Remarkably, Bet365 had the visitors priced up at 11/10 as late as five minutes before kick off. Some Albion fans reported getting 12/5.
We took the former price and with £100 on, won a hefty amount back – enough to pay for three bags of Starbust at the Amex over the next few weeks.
An interesting subplot
One young player who Potter might give an opportunity is left back Alex Cochrane, who has been heavily linked with a loan move to Pompey. A strong showing might increase Jackett’s desire to take him to Fratton Park for the season.
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Brighton v Portsmouth
That last meeting between Brighton and Portsmouth back in 2012 was memorable for the breathtaking quality of Vicente’s performance. It was probably his best game in an Albion shirt as he single handedly won the game, scoring both goals and looking genuinely unplayable.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Brighton v Portsmouth
FA Cup rules dictated that Portsmouth had to be given 15% of Withdean’s capacity for the third round tie in 2011, meaning that their fans took up all the stands at the east end of Withdean.
Brighton fans were therefore given the West Stand and we took it as an opportunity to check out the view in the name of research. What a terrible decision; without the use of the Hubble Space Telescope, we could not see anything happening at the other end of the pitch and had no idea that Dave Kitson had been sent off until he traipsed past us into the changing rooms.
Whoever thought it was acceptable to charge visiting fans £25 to sit there should have been sent to the Hague as a war criminal.
Portsmouth’s most famous fan
John Portsmouth FC Westwood changed his name by deed poll to reflect his support of Pompey, has 60 Portsmouth tattoos, the club crest shaved onto his head and ‘PFC’ engraved on his teeth. When not ringing a bell at Fratton Park, he is an antiquarian bookseller.
Prediction
Again, this is a preview in which it is hard to predict anything as who knows what Brighton team Potter will send out against Portsmouth.
For no other reason than it was the same scoreline by which we beat League One Bristol Rovers in the competition last year, we will go for a 2-1 Albion win.
