Brighton 0-0 Nottingham Forest: Groundhog Day at the Amex
Brighton 0-0 Nottingham Forest was all so predictable. Team sitting bottom of the Premier League come to the Amex, sit back to defend for their lives and invite the Albion to break them down.
90 minutes later and they leave with a clean sheet and a result. 70 percent possession. 19 shots. Seven on target. But the only number that ultimately matters is the big fat zero reflecting how many times Brighton stuck the ball in the back of the net. The Albion are more toothless than an octopus.
This is not a new problem. Nor is it one of Roberto De Zerbi’s making. Under Graham Potter, Brighton failed to beat Watford, West Brom, Sheffield United, Fulham, Burnley and Norwich City at the Amex in the seasons in which those clubs were relegated. The Albion drew blanks against the Cottagers, Clarets and Canaries.
When faced with struggling opponents who want to park the bus, Brighton consistently fail to fire. They need a Plan B, a greater depth and variety in attacking options when faced with such tactics.
Until that happens, the Albion will be trapped in a footballing version of Groundhog Day, reliving the same frustrating game over and over again.
Just don’t tell Andy Naylor. In the final throes of the summer transfer window, Naylor belittled any Albion supporters who questioned whether the club had the required firepower to overcome such tactics as “being obsessed with signing a 20-goal striker.”
Literally no Brighton fan thought the club could buy such a player. And as another game against defensive opponents ends with the Seagulls failing to score, the worries surrounding the striker department are proving to be well-founded. No centre forward has found the back of the net for the Albion so far this season.
Does De Zerbi share the concerns? After Brighton 0-0 Forest he said: “In my experience in the Premier League it’s not the first time my team play like this and we can’t win. We shoot 19 times, we have a lot of chances.”
Following defeat at Brentford on Friday night, he said: “We had a lot of potential chances, many shots on goal, the last pass, the cross. Against Tottenham it was the same, a lot of shots but we didn’t score.”
Read between the lines and those comments sound like they come from a man frustrated about his side’s inability to put away chances. Will De Zerbi be accused of being obsessed with a 20-goal striker if he asks Tony Bloom to increase his striker options in January?
Really, there is only one person to blame for the current predicament. Potter was the man happy to go into the new campaign with only Danny Welbeck and the unproven Deniz Undav as senior centre forwards.
Potter was the man who sanctioned the sale of Neal Maupay, Albion top scorer of the past three seasons. And Potter was the man who then walked out on the club a week after the transfer window had shut, leaving his replacement such a threadbare attack.
De Zerbi finds himself in a pretty helpless situation, inheriting the scoring against defensive teams problem that dogged Potter but with even less tools at his disposal to fix it than Potter enjoyed.
The good news is that neither Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium nor Chelsea coming to the Amex will sit back in the same manner as Spurs, Brentford and Forest have.
Brighton might actually find it easier scoring against City and Potter’s new mob. We saw that at Liverpool, when the Albion were so good that Guy Mowbray took to calling it Potterball with five shots of espresso.
A result against Erling Haaland and co? Giving Potter a bloody nose on his first return to the Amex? Neither would come as a total surprise to seasoned Albion watchers, used to witnessing the Seagulls go from one extreme to the other.
Those same seasoned Alion watchers knew what to expect from Brighton 0-0 Forest too. As each good chance to score went begging in a first half during which the Albion could have been out of sight, so the chances of no goals increased.
Leandro Trossard was central to most of the good Brighton did. Trossard was denied by Dean Henderson, rattled the bar and sent in a lovely cross which Adam Lallana could not quite connect with.
Joel Veltman produced the finish of a defender when firing over from six yards. Adam Webster did the same. Henderson saved from Solly March and Pascal Gross. It was one-way traffic.
There were fewer chances in the second half, especially after De Zerbi moved March up front as part of a tactical reshuffle which saw Tariq Lamptey enter proceedings.
No player has taken more shots in the Premier League without scoring a goal since the 2020-21 season than March. For March to play for 30 minutes as a striker further highlighted the paucity of options. Again, don’t tell Naylor.
Gross had one opportunity late on when his close range effort after Welbeck laid off a Lamptey cross was parried away by Henderson.
When that chance went begging, the Amex began to empty. Everybody knew that Brighton could have been out there for the next three hours and they still would not have found a way past Henderson.
Did we really expect anything else?
