Brighton 2-0 Watford: Pinch yourself, Albion are 2nd in the Premier League
Before we start talking about Thursday nights in Azerbaijan, top six finishes and Brighton becoming Premier League champions, it feels important to note that the Watford side who the Albion beat 2-0 were pretty rubbish.
They will surely be returning from whence they came in nine months time, living a yo-yo existence between Championship and top flight. It would appear that the gap between the two divisions is increasing every season.
The fact that Watford were so poor though is what made this victory all the more sweeter. They were the sort of opponents who Brighton have never been able to beat under Graham Potter.
If the Albion are suddenly able to win against the sides around them in the bottom half of the table as well as going toe-to-toe with the big six, then suddenly anything seems possible.
Sheffield United. West Brom. Fulham. Burnley. Southampton. Crystal Palace. Wolves. Aston Villa. Everton. Last season, every club who finished in the bottom half of the Premier League left the Amex with something to show for their efforts, bar Newcastle United.
Potter watched on wearing his tracksuit with a gormless look on his face, his players unable to do anything other than stroke the ball from side to side and miss chances which a grandmother would put away.
So far this season, the Albion have been clinical when it matters and as a result they have six points out of six and sit second in the table, the highest position they have ever occupied in 120 years of playing football.
It took until the middle of November to win two matches last season; in 2021-22, it has happened before my mother has to get her tomatoes in – apparently at least, for I do not knowing anything about growing vegetables.
Even Potter’s appearance is on an upward curve and it surely will not be long before Next have him on the front of their catalogue. There will be a queue a mile long on Western Road on Sunday morning of Brighton fans all demanding the Potter look, such is the feel good factor around the city created by two wins to kick start a top flight campaign for the first time.
The happy mood translated into a cracking atmosphere at the Amex, even if the 29,485 attendance announced was clearly a prettendance which would have caused Pinocchio’s nose to become longer than Route 66.
A large number of season ticket holders seem to have been put off by the prospect of ID checks, showing a Covid passport, taking a lateral flow test before the game and no bags bigger than an A4 piece of paper (unless of course you had a bag full of expensive merchandise from the club shop, in which case it could be suitcase sized and transparent).
For those who did attend Brighton 2-0 Watford, virtually none of the forewarned processing happened. Albion fans spoke of nobody asking to see ID and problems with the phone signal at the Amex meant that loading a Covid passport was nigh on impossible.
The human race could put a man on the moon in 1969 but there is not enough 4G in the Falmer area in 2021 to cope with people trying to load an app.
Hardly anyone was wearing a mask either and once you negotiated the queues to get in, it felt like the pandemic had never happened. This was football as it used to be before March 2020 with the only exception being that Brighton are actually quite good at the moment.
It took just 10 minutes for the Albion to take the lead and there could not have been a more popular scorer. Over came a typically pinpoint Pascal Gross corner and Shane Duffy continued his renaissance by crashing a header into the back of the Watford net via the frame of the goal.
Having hardly featured under Potter in 2019-20 before enduring a horrible year at Celtic, Duffy’s return is on course to be the greatest Brighton comeback since Guy Butters went from being put up for sale on eBay by supporters to winning Player of the Season in the 2003-04 promotion campaign. Who knew that all Brighton needed to seamlessly replace Ben White was for Molly Malone’s to be shut down?
Duffy claimed the sponsor’s man-of-the-match but the real star of the show for the Albion in Brighton 2-0 Watford was Solly March.
A week earlier and Ismaila Sarr had caused Aston Villa so many problems as Watford kicked off their campaign with a thrilling 3-2 win that a very good Premier League left back in Matt Targett was hauled at half time having been given a total run around.
Against Brighton, you hardly noticed that Sarr was playing because of the job March did. What made this even more impressive is that Potter lined Brighton up in a back four, so this was the first time that March had been asked to play as an orthodox left back in his career.
He will not face many sterner tests than Sarr and he passed it with flying colours. Let us hope Gareth Southgate was watching as Luke Shaw aside, England are not exactly blessed with left sided defenders at the minute and March now comes with the added bonus of being able to do a job at left back and left wing back.
Nearly as impressive was Gross, who was greeted with a huge HOORAY every time he pulled off a Gross Turn, recalling memories of the cheers that Nathan Jones used to get at Withdean whenever he threw in a completely unnecessary Rhonda Valley Stepover.
Who of those that witnessed Jones getting outpaced down the wing by a squirrel at the Theatre of Trees would have thought that within 20 years, the Albion would sit second in the Premier League?
The prospect of the Albion owning a midfielder worth in excess of £50 million would have seemed far fetched back then too. Yves Bissouma added a bit more to his price tag by setting up the second goal in Brighton 2-0 Watford, pressing aggressively to disposses Tom Cleverly.
Once Bissouma had the ball, he threaded through Neal Maupay to leave the French striker one-on-one with Daniel Bachmann. This was exactly the sort of opportunity we watched Maupay miss on countless occasions last season and you suspect that the majority of the crowd was expecting him to fire the ball somewhere towards Rottingdean.
It came as a pleasant surprise then when Maupay produced an emphatic, clinical finish which no goalkeeper would have saved. In doing so, the much maligned Frenchman became the second Albion player after Glenn Murray to score 20 goals in the club’s current spell in the top flight.
Maupay seems to be playing with a newfound confidence at the minute, a combination perhaps of that red card after the final whistle in the 2-1 defeat at Wolves last season being a watershed moment and becoming a dad in the summer. Maupay would not be the first player to suddenly display maturity on the pitch as a result of Fatherhood.
Unfortunately for Brighton, that goal on 41 minutes was Maupay’s last contribution as he injured a shoulder shortly after. That forced his departure at half time with Aaron Connolly coming on for his 978th chance of redemption after doing something stupid.
Connolly’s crime which saw him miss the trip to Burnley was apparently to throw a hissy fit in training after it became clear he would not be starting at Turf Moor.
If Maupay’s transformation so far this season can be attributed to becoming a father, then let us hope that Connolly pulled in Shoosh after Brighton 2-0 Watford as he could do with growing up as well, although whether Brighton can afford to wait another nine months for that to happen is up for debate.
Connolly could have scored within seven minutes of his introduction when Gross threaded a low cross into the box. It bounced off a Watford defender and Connolly looked well placed front and centre of the goal, only to put his effort inches wide as it crashed into the stanchion with fans in both the West Stand and East Stand mistakenly thinking it had gone in.
Watford enjoyed their best spell after that, forcing Robert Sanchez into his only save of the evening low down to his left from a Cleverley shot. The Hornets then had a goal ruled out for offside with the linesman giving a refreshingly early flag.
Despite this unexpected period of Hornets dominance, Brighton remained calm and unflustered. Nobody epitomised that more than Lewis Dunk, who produced one of those chests back to Sanchez under pressure which is fast becoming his calling card.
Brighton could have added a third when Bachmann kept out a Gross effort and Alexis Max Allister retrieved the loose ball but nobody could get into the box and onto the end of the Lionel Messi look-a-like’s chip back in.
Mac Allister was clearly frustrated at that, a sign that Brighton were not happy to rest on their laurels. It did not matter though that the Albion could not add to the score and at the end of a week when Onlyfans announced that people would no longer be able to pay to watch pornography, Brighton fans could simply load the Premier League table for free to see the Albion second.
It does not get much better than that. Europe, here we come…
