Brighton 0-1 Arsenal: Potter’s ridiculous selection throws a winnable game
There have been plenty of excuses made for Graham Potter only delivering two wins so far in the 2020-21 season. Strikers who cannot finish, bad luck and a lack of support in the transfer market. For Brighton 0-1 Arsenal, you could not blame anyone but the Albion manager.
Forget that Arsenal are a big name club and take a look at the Premier League table. Before the Gunners rocked up at the Amex, they were one place above Brighton having made their worst start to a season for 46 years.
Under Mikel Arteta, Arsenal are a far cry from the double winners and invincibles that they were when Arsene Wenger was at the helm. We know that first hand, having seen Brighton lose only once at their hands in six games since the Albion won promotion to the top flight in 2017.
Arsenal at home was a winnable fixture. So what does Potter do? He names the most ridiculous Brighton team that most of us have ever seen – some achievement when you think of the nonsense that Mark McGhee used to come up with.
Bernardo, Davy Propper and Alexis Mac Allister all came in for their first starts of the season and Alireza Jahanbakhsh his second. To play one or two individuals who have not been given much game time is a bit of a risk; to name four players with one Premier League start between them is madness.
Most damning was that Potter willingly chose to go into the game with no recognised centre forward. Danny Welbeck, Aaron Connolly, Andi Zeqiri and Neal Maupay all sat on the bench for a match which Brighton could have won. Also dropping out were Solly March – who has been Brighton’s best player this season – and Ben White.
Maupay’s exclusion was particularly baffling. The Frenchman’s goals tend to come in streaks and having notched for the first time in three months in the 2-2 draw at West Ham United 48 hours earlier, he would have come into the Arsenal game full of confidence – never mind that he always seems to save his best performances for opponents who he has history with. This looked like a game tailor-made for a Maupay goal.
Instead, Mac Allister and Alireza Jahanbakhsh started up front. Neither is a centre forward. It was the sort of team selection that a university student makes on Football Manager at 3am after a hard night on the magic mushrooms, not that of a highly paid Premier League manager.
To be fair to the players, they did reasonably well, especially in the first half. Once again though, whatever Potter said or did at the interval led to a serious drop off in performances for the second half, allowing Arsenal to leave Brighton with a 0-1 victory which was relatively comfortable in the end.
That a Brighton starting line up which was effectively a Carabao Cup team could dominate against Arsenal in the opening 45 minutes made Potter throwing the match all the more galling – if a team with no recognised striker and full of rusty players who have barely featured in 2020-21 were on top, then imagine what a full strength Albion line up could have done in the first half to a Gunners side who were pretty shocking.
Brighton had a couple of chances to take the lead in that first half. Bernardo appeared to have found a time machine and gone back to the winter of 2018 to retrieve his footballing ability as he had an excellent game at left wing back, teeing up Jahanbakhsh as early as the 12th minute who steered a difficult chance high over the bar.
Dan Burn’s ability in the air came into focus again when he was unable to get a free header on target from an Yves Bissouma clip and Jahanbakhsh drew an excellent save from Bernd Leno with a rasping effort low down to the goalkeepers right.
It was noticeable that this Brighton team had no qualms in taking on early shots. Whether that was by Potter’s design or because the likes of Jahanbakhsh and Mac Allister in particular are more happy to have a go when they get a sight of goal, it was refreshing to see compared to the sideways pass, sideways pass, sideways pass, sideways pass, sideways pass, that has taken over in recent weeks.
Early in the second half and Brighton were indebted to Robert Sanchez for a brilliant save from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Bukayo Saka escaped down the left and delivered a low cross which you would have bet your house on Aubameyang converting given that he was front and centre of the goal and less than six yards out.
Sanchez though had other ideas and he produced a textbook cricket long barrier to turn the Arsenal captain’s effort over the bar. It was a world class stop against one of the best players in the Premier League and yet Sanchez looked so unphased about it all with a demeanour more in keeping with a bloke whose missus has sent him to the Co-op to get some coleslaw.
By this point, Arsenal were now very much on top. Brighton’s only effort of the second half saw Propper go in on goal but his shot was comfortably saved by Leno.
Brighton were crying out for a striker to get back on the front foot and try and turn the tide. Potter though seemed to be more concerned with using his little notepad to write down his shopping list and it was Arteta who instead looked to his bench for attacking reinforcements, throwing on Alexandre Lacazette.
This proved to be a very shrewd move. Within 21 seconds, Lacazette took advantage of some slack Albion defending to score. Sako outpaced Burn and Adam Webster allowed the new introduction far too much time and space to take a touch and beat Sanchez at his near post. Brighton 0-1 Arsenal.
Potter’s reaction to going 1-0 behind was a series of substitutions nearly as baffling as his starting XI. March, Maupay and Leandro Trossard all entered the action with Propper, Mac Allister and Jahanbakhsh coming off. Brighton therefore ended up playing out the final 20 minutes with Bernardo as a central midfielder alongside Bissouma.
Once the full time whistle brought an end to proceedings, Brighton 0-1 Arsenal gave Potter’s Albion a number of unwanted records as the curtain came down on a pretty horrible 2020.
No Albion side has ever been so appalling at home as to win just once in a calendar year. One victory from 17 attempts set a Premier League record for the lowest total of victories on home soil for a club who completed a calendar year.
Failing to beat Arsenal equalled the Brighton club record of 12 home games without victory, set by Steve Gritt’s side in the 1997-98 campaign. To match the achievements of the worst team in Albion history is quite impressive.
In his post-match interviews, Potter trotted out his normal nonsense. He told the BBC, “there was lots to be positive about, certainly first half.” The official Albion website meanwhile got the line, “I can’t fault anything, we were undone by a bit of quality by them.”
He can’t fault anything when he has named a weakened team and we have lost 1-0 at home to a side one place above us in the table? Lay off the cooking sherry, Graham.
Reading the reaction online, this feels like it could be Potter’s ‘Millwall moment’. Even fans who were previously supportive of the Brighton manager are starting to question his selections, his attitude and where this team is going following the 0-1 defeat to Arsenal.
Had the Amex been full with 30,000 people paying their hard earned cash – only for Potter to send out that starting XI – then the scenes at the full time whistle could easily have been on a par with Sami Hyypia’s final home match in charge when the atmosphere turned poisonous.
No doubt Paul Barber will use his next set of programme notes to tell us all that we do not understand Brighton’s grand plan, as he did prior to the 1-1 draw with 10 man Sheffield United. The insinuation from the boardroom in that piece was that the club knows best, we should all be quiet and Potter is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Which is concerning. Most of us have seen enough Brighton managers come and go to know when something is not working. A lot of supporters are now comparing Potter to Hyypia, Micky Adams II and the final throes of the McGhee reign, which tells you everything you need to know.
If the grand plan is for Brighton to be relegated to the Championship, then fair play to the Albion, they are nailing it. Burnley have hauled themselves out of the bottom three as predicted, West Bromwich Albion may have been hammered by The Leeds United but they have played the Sam Allardyce trump card and Fulham seem to be getting better with each passing week.
Whilst all our relegation rivals are improving, Brighton are going backwards with a manager who is making increasingly bizarre decisions, does not know what his best team is and who has won just seven games since being handed a six-year contract back in November 2019. No Brighton manager has ever survived this long with results as poor as Potter’s.
Most concerning of all though is that you cannot see where Brighton’s next win is coming from. Fulham, Sheffield United, West Ham and Arsenal are the sorts of games which you have to pick up more than three draws from if you want to survive in the Premier League.
Something has to change soon. Either Potter finds a way to start delivering results or the Albion have to consider a change, even if that would lead to a lot of egg on faces for that six year contract after Potter had been at the club for just six months and won only four matches.
Because if Brighton continue the way they are going, we can all look forward to trips to Barnsley and Rotherham United in 2021-22.
