Brighton 0-3 Manchester United: Albion show good & bad sides in cup exit

There are good and bad sides to this Albion squad. Both were on display in torrential rain at the Amex as Brighton exited the League Cup at the fourth round stage in a 0-3 defeat to Manchester United.

The good largely comes from the playing style installed by Graham Potter. Although Brighton were nowhere near as dominant as they had been in that controversial defeat to the same opponents 96 hours earlier, the Albion still dominated the possession and shot counts – no mean feat against a United side packed with quality.

Ole Gunnar Solksjaer made 11 changes from United’s 3-2 win at the Amex but such is the strength in depth at Old Trafford that he could still call upon individuals like Dean Henderson, Eric Bailly, Juan Mata and Donny van de Beek.

Potter surprised a lot of people by including Lewis Dunk and Ben White in his starting line up. The Albion boss clearly fancied becoming only the second manager in history to lead the club into the quarter finals of the League Cup and he named a half decent bench too including Leandro Trossard and Neal Maupay.

We were delighted to see Brighton taking the competition a little more seriously. Potter’s attitude to both this trophy and the FA Cup last season stunk, especially when he sent out a team of children against Aston Villa.

Villa went all the way to the final after winning 3-1 in the third round at the Amex, giving their fans a memorable day out at Wembley and coming within one game of qualifying for Europe.

That the Albion won’t be following in Villa’s footsteps was down to the bad sides of their game. Namely, an inability to take chances at one end and a worrying development at being shocking at defending set pieces at the other.

Nobody needs any introduction to the first problem. Creating plenty of opportunities but taking hardly any of them was the story of the 2019-20 season and even though Neal Maupay and Aaron Connolly have notched four times in three Premier League games between them so far, if either suffers an injury or suspension then Brighton will find themselves up a quite a famous creek without a steering device.

Brighton need a striker. Viktor Gyokeres works hard and puts himself about, but he has had a limited impact against Portsmouth, Preston North End and now United in his three League Cup appearances.

He is not yet ready to lead the line in the Premier League, which is where Potter will have to turn if no new forward is incoming before the transfer window shuts on Monday.

Send Gyokeres on loan to Swansea City, let him have another season of development playing Championship football week in, week out and let us see where we are then.

A £3.5 million deal is said to have been done for FC Lausanne-Sport striker Andi Zeqiri. That seems to have left a lot of Albion fans giddy with excitement, an odd reaction given that he is a player who has scored the majority of his career goals in the Swiss Second Division – a lower standard of football than Bundesliga 2, where Gyokeres did reasonably well for St Pauli last season.

Perhaps the hype over Zeqiri comes from the fact that we are desperate for a striker – any striker – that Potter could sign Lee from Gogglebox, say he was the target man we have been looking for and it would be greeted with a level of enthusiasm akin to the arrival of both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Lee from Gogglebox would not provide the goals that Brighton need and it is asking a lot of Zeqiri to come in and start scoring at a level of football far beyond that which he has experienced before.

The player’s father and journalists in Kosovo – who he could make his international debut for next month – seem adamant that Zeqiri will be a member of Potter’s first team squad as soon as he arrives, whereas Andy Naylor has said that he will start in the Under 23s and potentially move on loan in January.

If Zeqiri’s father is correct and Potter is intending to use the striker as his third choice centre forward, then that must be seen as something of a risk.

Is a player with 35 goals from 104 Lausanne appearances ready to challenge Maupay and Connolly and start scoring goals in the toughest league in the world? The most likely answer to that question is no.

The defending set pieces issue has become even more pressing than the striker one in recent weeks. Brighton could sign Messi, Ronaldo or Lee from Gogglebox and they could score twice a game for the rest of the season. It won’t make a jot of difference though if we keep giving away chances from set pieces at the other end.

Two of the three Manchester United goals in their 0-3 win over Brighton came from shocking defending from set pieces, the latest goals given away by terrible defending.

On Saturday, United scored from a poorly dealt with free kick and a moment of madness from Maupay to conceded that late penalty, even if VAR awarding it after the final whistle was hugely contentious.

Chelsea had a Jorginho penalty and a Kurt Zouma goal from an uncleared set piece to thank for their 3-1 opening day win at the Amex.

A trend is developing. Brighton have now conceded three times in six of their last seven home matches against Premier League opposition – and the majority of those goals have come because we cannot defend set pieces.

Mata has been taking free kicks and corners in England now for well over a decade. Everyone knows that he will whip the ball into the space between defensive line and goalkeeper and nine times out of 10, it will cause problems.

Brighton therefore defending with such a high line against a Mata free kick for the first was questionable, given that it left a lot of space for the Spaniard to exploit.

Just to compound that decision, White then managed to play everyone on side by being deeper than the Titanic and Bernardo took social distancing beyond the recommended two metres by allowing Scott McTominay to meander into the box and place a free header past Jason Steele.

Potter criticising his players in public is rare, but it is happening with increasing frequency now when it comes to defending set pieces. The Brighton boss said after the 0-3 defeat to Manchester United that the first goal was “cheap” and “poor”, words normally used by a girl when you take them to steak night at Wetherspoons or a first date rather than by our overly-positive Albion manager.

United’s third came from a Paul Pogba free kick which was going wide of goal until Joel Veltman turned his back in the wall, it hit the Dutch international defender and deflected in. Never. Turn. Your. Back. In. The. Wall. You get told it at Under 7s level, so why is a highly paid professional football doing it?

Incredibly, the commentators on Sky Sports began gushing about Pogba’s brilliant strike. Forget the ridiculous handball laws, if our so-called experts are now saying that a free kick shanked wide which deflects in off the wall is a fantastic piece of play from a footballing genius, then the game really has gone. I could do that for £75 and a litre of Scrumpy Jack rather than the £90 million and £290,000 a week which United are paying Pogba.

Mata was the man who scored United’s other goal which came in-between the comical free kick defending and, er, the second bit of comical free kick defending.

The Spaniard delivered a cool finish past Steele after a deft flick from van de Beek and effectively secured Manchester United their 0-3 win over Brighton.

Things might have been different were it not for an extraordinary Henderson save just before United’s second. Jayson Molumby was outstanding all evening and his determination teed up Trossard who hit a powerful shot towards the bottom corner from relatively close range.

Having been denied by the Manchester United woodwork three times on Saturday, the Belgian now found himself stopped by the reactions of United’s number two.

Henderson somehow got down and flung out a hand strong enough to turn the ball around the post within a second of the ball leaving Trossard’s feet.

When Benjamin Franklin said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”, he was wrong. Nothing is certain except death, taxes and Leandro Trossard not scoring against Manchester United.

Brighton’s League Cup run has been fun whilst it lasted and Potter will have learnt plenty about his side’s strengths and weaknesses so in that regard, it has been a useful experience.

Sort out defending set pieces, buy a striker, get a left wing back. The door to a Thursday night in Albania via the League Cup might have been slammed shut, but do all that in the next four days and we could yet qualify for Europe through the Premier League or FA Cup. A boy can dream, right?