Fulham 3-1 Brighton: Changes keep Cottagers curse going on

Another trip to Craven Cottage, another defeat. Fulham 3-1 Brighton kept up the Albion’s woeful record in this part of West London with Fabian Hurzeler having to take a large amount of blame for the result.

The Youngest Permanent Manager in Premier League History made a raft of changes and switched to a back three to accommodate Lewis Dunk.

Hurzeler knew he could not drop Igor Julio or Jan Paul van Hecke. Good management would be leaving Dunk on the bench, even if he is captain and has been a mainstay of the side for a decade now.

Bad management is changing the side’s shape to fit one player in. Especially as with a little research, Hurzeler could have seen what happened when Roberto De Zerbi tried a back three of Van Hecke, Dunk and Igor last season. Nine times out of 10 it was a disaster.

Not playing Georginio Rutter was a mistake. Simon Adingra as a right wing back did not really work. And if Danny Welbeck is out with a minor injury, surely that is the time to give Evan Ferguson an opportunity?

Before Fulham 3-1 Brighton, your correspondent was very much against Ferguson going out on loan. But if Hurzeler will not start him when Welbeck is unavailable, Ferguson may as well depart when January rolls around.

Not that Hurzeler seemed to recognise any of that. Or at least, recognise it publicly. His post-match interview in which he claimed Brighton played well and could have won two or three games of football sounded like someone who had partaken in rather too much gluhwein.

Having said that, Hurzeler did have a point when he claimed that individual mistakes of a type which can be easily cut out contributed to the defeat.

Take the opening goal from Fulham after just four minutes. Bart Verbruggen attempted to play out from the back but succeeded only in passing the ball straight to Alex Iwobi.

Brighton somehow make Iwobi look like the greatest footballer who ever lived every time they play the Cottagers. Iwobi had the simple task here of striking the ball into the open goal for the first of what would end up being a brace.

Bernd Leno made decent saves from Joao Pedro and Adingra in the two best opportunities the Albion had to level.

Adingra probably should have done better with his chance. He struck it way too close to the Fulham number one when he had an entire goal to aim at, following a lovely pull back by Kaoru Mitoma and dummy from Matt O’Riley.

The Albion equaliser did at least provide a bright spot. Van Hecke played a long ball out of defence. Pedro touched it off brilliantly to Carlos Baleba, who struck a crisp effort from distance into the bottom corner.

Baleba celebrated with Kazenga LuaLua style gymnastics, much to the delight of the away end. Which was pretty much where the delight ended.

Andreas Pereira swung over a corner with 11 minutes remaining. Brighton were far from convincing in dealing with it, the result being it taking a deflection off O’Riley and beating Verbruggen for an own goal.

One goalkeeping error and an own goal had gifted Fulham their two on the scoreboard at that point. There was no doubting the quality of the third Cottagers goal, however.

Iwobi – of course – managed to work some space under a couple of weak tackles before firing across Verbruggen to wrap up the three points with three minutes remaining.

Fulham 3-1 Brighton highlighted the problem the Albion have when it comes to facing teams from outside the European Super League Big Six, the Saudi Sportswashers and someone like Aston Villa.

Hurzeler and Brighton have rightly received praise for the manner in which they have beaten Manchester United, Manchester City, Newcastle and Spurs this season.

But as nice as victories like those are, they are not the games which ultimately decide whether a club qualify for Europe or not. Which we must presume is the objective for the Albion having spent £193 million in the summer.

You have to beat Ipswich Town, Nottingham Forest and Wolves at home to finish in the top six or seven. And you ideally need to be taking points from somewhere like Fulham, even if you did sell your soul to the devil to get five fortunate consecutive wins over the Cottagers between 2014 and 2017.

This is what makes the run of games Brighton have through December so interesting. Only if the Albion overcome their Achilles’ heel and start beating opponents further down the table will a return to the Europa League be possible.

We will find out much more about Brighton’s Hurzeler from matches against Southampton, Fulham, Leicester, Crystal Palace, West Ham and Brentford than we do United or City.

And whilst what we have found out from facing the Saints and Cottagers (playing now on BBC 6 Music) hasn’t been great, the good news is Hurzeler is young and will learn from it.

He has shown this season that he is far more open to changing his ways than either De Zerbi or Glow Up Graham Potter were.

The high line went after Chelsea tore the Albion apart and he has become more and more pragmatic as the campaign has worn on.

Whereas poor decisions and mistakes from De Zerbi and Potter were always likely to be repeated out of sheer stubbornness, Hurzeler will be better for what went wrong in Fulham 3-1 Brighton.

Let’s bloody hope so, anyway.