Match Review: Brighton 0-1 Southampton
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Brighton and Hove Albion may have fielded their most expensive ever starting line up against Southampton in the Carabao Cup, but it was a bloke who scored constantly against us in League One and the Championship who was the match winner.
Bloody Charlie Austin. His 88th minute goal was his sixth in seven games against the Albion. He’s now netted against us for Swindon Town in League One, Burnley and Queens Park Rangers in the Championship and Southampton in the League Cup. What’s the betting he adds the Premier League to that list when we visit St Mary’s in three weeks time?
It seems ironic that many Albion fans didn’t bother going because Chris Hughton was only ever going to pick a reserve team, yet the “reserve” team he sent out cost in excess of £50m.
Record buy Alireza Jahanbakhsh started. Second highest buy Jurgen Locadia started. Third highest buy Yves Bissouma started. Fourth highest buy Bernardo started. That’s £55m without factoring in the several million spent on each of David Button and Pascal Gross.
It was Gross’ selection that was most intriguing as Hughton played him in a very deep, central midfield role. It’s the sort of move we’d try on Football Manager when at university after taking a batch of magic mushrooms, but surprisingly it actually worked worked to a degree.
Gross was able to dictate the play from deep and played some decent passes which you doubt many other players in the squad are capable of. It’s becoming more and more apparent with each passing away game that Gross is too slow to support Glenn Murray, which isn’t particularly helpful when alls we do is try and play on the counter.
Is Gross deep with Bissouma in the number 10 roll the solution? Having scored just 10 goals in 21 Premier League away games, it’s surely got to be worth a try?
Especially as Bissouma was comfortably the most entertaining thing about the tie. He looked the real deal again, picking up the ball and looking to make things happen. Already, he appears to be streaks ahead of the other big money arrivals, with Jahanbakhsh struggling to have any impact at all and Locadia doing some good things followed by something mystifying.
There were debuts for David Button in goal, Will Collar at right back, Ben Barclay at centre back and Viktor Gyokeres up front. Button’s performance was one of concern. He started the game alright, making some decent stops before his confidence was completely shot to pieces after a second half mistake and his game fell apart – just as predicted by Fulham blog Cottagers Confidential. Based on that, we’d be getting on the phone to Wigan Athletic to tell them they’ll need another goalkeeper in January as Christian Walton is coming back to cover Maty Ryan’s absence during the Asian Cup.
That mistake came when Button and Collar tied themselves in knots as the goalkeepers short pass was intercepted by Sam Gallagher who fed Austin with only a Bernardo block preventing the howler being punished.
If there was any doubt about who wanted to win the tie more out of Hughton or Mark Hughes, then the substitutions each manager made told the story. Hughton threw on only Davy Propper and Aaron Connolly with Connolly receiving the grand total of about 120 seconds.
Hughes meanwhile introduced Gallagher, Austin and Nathan Redmond in a clear sign he actually wanted to win the tie. As a result, it was Redmond’s cross that was headed in by Austin with just two minutes of normal time remaining.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
