Brighton 0-1 Fulham: Time machine back to the Covid season

2020-21 was a grim time to be an Albion fan. Covid lockdowns, Boris Johnson lying and partying his way through government and a Seagulls side who dominated games but would frequently lose because they could not put the ball in the back of the net. Watching Brighton 0-1 Fulham was like stepping in a time machine to a period most of us would rather forget.

Fulham’s gamesmanship and the performance of the match officials drew a lot of ire after the game, to the point that Roberto De Zerbi was shown a red card following the final whistle for confronting referee Darren England in the tunnel.

But Brighton have now taken 38 shots in their past 180 minutes of Premier League action against Fulham and Crystal Palace, 14 of which have been on target.

All those efforts have returned a single goal and a single point. Refereeing incompetence might be a major reason why the Seagulls have failed to win their past two matches, but it would not be a factor if Brighton had a better chance conversion rate than 2.63 percent.

This of course is nothing new, just a problem that has not impacted De Zerbi since his change to 4-2-3-1 in October led Brighton to become one of the most free scoring teams in the Premier League.

What it does do is serve to underline the fact that the Albion are far from the finished article and De Zerbi needs backing in the transfer market.

Top scorer Leandro Trossard was sold with no replacement coming in. With Danny Welbeck injured and Deniz Undav still finding his feet, all of the Albion’s striker eggs are in the basket of an 18-year-old Evan Ferguson.

This is not necessarily a problem when Solly March and Kaoru Mitoma are in flying form. But once the rest of the Premier League have worked out that if you double mark the Albion’s wide players to stop them getting into shooting positions, Brighton need to find other routes to goal.

Marco Silva had done his homework. Kenny Tete and Antonee Robinson had good games at full back for Fulham whilst Tim Ream was impressive at centre back.

In amongst all the pre-game chat about how Lewis Dunk and the Albion always struggle against Aleksandar Mitrovic, it has gone under the radar that Brighton came into the game having failed to score in their past three matches with the Cottagers. Make that four now.

Or we could just put Brighton 0-1 Fulham down to the opposition. The Albion seem to have used up all their luck against the Cottagers when stealing six points in the 2016-17 Championship promotion season via two 2-1 victories despite being woeful in both matches.

Since then, no Albion side has beaten Fulham in six attempts. Put them in the same bracket as Plucky Little Bournemouth and Palace as Brighton’s bogey team.

The tone for what was to come in Brighton 0-1 Fulham was set as early as the second minute. Ferguson put a right footed volley over the bar from a clever March touch, the first of a succession of misses the Albion would manage over the next 88 minutes.

March bent a curling effort just wide of the post. Ream was in the right place at the right time to block a Joel Veltman volley.

Bernd Leno was quick off his line to beat Ferguson to a Pascal Gross through ball which sliced through the Fulham defence.

Leno then kept out a volley from Alexis Mac Allister and Tete produced an outstanding piece of defending to turn behind a Pervis Estupinan cross on the stretch when a whole host of blue and white shirts were lurking in the box.

“This has got 0-1 Fulham written all over it” was the most commonly heard sentence amongst Brighton fans at half time, although it is said with much less conviction with De Zerbi at the helm rather than Glow Up Graham.

The 3-0 win over Liverpool and the 1-0 victory over Bournemouth at the Amex both came when second half goals followed dominant first half performances.

Unfortunately, that was not to be the case on this occasion. Lewis Dunk spurned a glorious opportunity five minutes after the break, heading wide a Gross corner at the back post.

Then it was Mr England’s turn to come to the fore. Veltman went down in the box after appearing to get his legs tangled with Robinson, only for the referee to wave play on. The ball fell to March who was denied by a strong Leno block.

There was far less controversy about the decision to rule out a March effort for offside shortly after. The winger was miles off when firing home a downwards Adam Webster header.

March crossed and Mac Allister connected with a difficult flying volley. It was too close to Leno though, who instinctively pushed it away.

Mitoma appeared to be looking for contact when he went down in the box under a challenge from Tete. Mr England certainly felt that to be the case as he again turned down the Albion’s penalty appeals.

De Zerbi changed things up by introducing Undav and Facundo Buonanotte as a front two in the closing stages. They almost made an instant impact when Undav raced onto a Mac Allister pass and squared for Buonanotte who swept into the open goal.

Just like March earlier however, there could be no doubt that Undav was in an offside position and so a second Brighton goal was chalked off.

Undav next put a header with his back to goal wide to set up the sucker punch from Fulham. There were two minutes of normal time remaining when Veltman failed to win a tackle on halfway, enabling Carlos Vinicius to turn and release Manor Solomon into acres of space down the Brighton right.

Solomon was too quick for Dunk to get across and cover, charging into the box and beating the otherwise totally unemployed Robert Sanchez with a low effort drilled across the Albion goalkeeper and into the bottom corner.

Fulham had been desperately time wasting almost from the first whistle and their attempts to slow the game down became even more extreme once they had taken the lead.

It is one thing to take your time over throws and corners. It is quite another to fake the seriousness of a head injury to bring the game to a halt.

The ball was probably in play for less than an hour and had the officials taken the approach shown at the World Cup of adding every single lost minute on, Brighton 0-1 Fulham would probably be going on until Monday morning.

But ultimately, even if we were sat in the Amex for approaching 40 hours it seems unlikely the Albion would have scored. It was just one of those days when nothing would go in, the sort we all hoped had gone to Chelsea along with Glow Up and his coaching team.

The challenge now facing De Zerbi is to ensure that this return to 2020-21 Brighton is just a blip rather than the norm.

And there is no better team to bounce back about than West Ham when the Albion return to Premier League action in a fortnight.