Brighton 5-2 Leicester: Glorious chaos in an Amex goal fest

Good grief. What exactly did we witness at the Amex? Brighton 5-2 Leicester City was gloriously chaotic, the Albion returning to winning ways in the best possible fashion by scoring five goals in a top flight game for the first time in their history.

Managers and players do not probably enjoy these games as much as fans. Graham Potter certainly looked miffed when the Foxes scored their second, taking the running total onto four goals in a little over half an hour.

For supporters though, there is nothing more entertaining than feeling like every attack could end in somebody scoring. It was this quality that made the 2010-11 League One title season under Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named so much fun.

The high scoring thrillers with the likes of Dagenham & Redbridge, Carlisle United and Bristol Rovers live in the memory still 12 years later. Brighton 5-2 Leicester is unlikely to be forgotten anytime soon, either.

In the Amex era, games with five, six or seven goals have been rare. For Brighton to come out on top in such a fixture just a few days after the transfer window shut with fans concerned about the lack of striker signing to backup Danny Welbeck was perfect timing.

Brighton 5-2 Leicester is not the sort of game where that decision can be truly judged, however. The Foxes’ defending looked more suited to the opening day of the Sussex Sunday League season at Waterhall earlier on Sunday morning than the Premier League at the Amex on Sunday afternoon.

You could have put Leon Best out there and he might have scored. No, it is matches where the Albion are chasing a goal or Danny Welbeck is not on the pitch for whatever reason that we will find out if Tony Bloom’s gamble in not seeking centre forward reinforcements has worked or not. There is a long autumn ahead and a lot of football to be played between now and January.

Part of the gamble is based upon Brighton scoring from elsewhere on the pitch. They can do without a seven to 10 goal-a-season striker to help Welbeck if wide men and midfielders step up to the plate and take on the burden of putting the ball in the back of the net.

Which brings us nicely onto the best player on the pitch in Brighton 5-2 Leicester – Alexis Mac Allister. The Argentine midfielder scored twice and would have become the first Albion player to claim a Premier League hat-trick were it not for an abysmal piece of VAR intervention.

Mac Allister has been outstanding this season, confirming himself as one of the first names on Potter’s team sheet. Keep playing like this and he will surely have a part to play for Argentina at the winter World Cup and be next summer’s guaranteed Albion sale of £50 million plus.

Without Mac Allister, Brighton could easily have become just the second team to dreeep points to Leicester this season. The Foxes made the perfect start, taking the lead with only 51 seconds on the clock.

Solly March lost the ball far too easily to Youri Tielemans, who threaded in Harvey Barnes. He found Patson Daka on the left and a low cross somehow evaded the sliding Lewis Dunk, Adam Webster, Joel Veltman and Robert Sanchez to leave Kelechi Iheanacho free to finish at the back post.

Ask most Albion fans before kick off what they were expectingc from this game and you would have got the answer ‘Typical Brighton’.

That is to say that the Seagulls sitting fourth in the Premier League were bound to lose to a Leicester side propping up the table without a win.

Even those with the most faith in something ‘Typical Brighton’ happening could not have imagined that the Foxes would take the lead straight from kick off. You had to laugh, otherwise you would have cried.

March was Public Enemy Number One for his role in the Leicester opener for all of around seven minutes before making up for it at the other end.

Pascal Gross swept a ball into the box from the right flank, Leandro Trossard lofted it back across goal from the opposite side and March was there to head past Danny Ward via Leicester defender Luke Thomas.

From inside the Amex, it looked like March had finally got a Premier League goal after a very impressive back catalogue of misses so far this season.

Replays soon showed though that March had actually managed to head the ball off target from a matter of yards away. It therefore went down officially as a Thomas own goal.

Not that it seemed to matter to March. That moment gave him a very obvious confidence boost and he subsequently produced one of his best performances of the season.

If an own goal can to do that, then imagine what will happen if and when he finally finds the back of the net for himself?

Brighton took the lead on the 15 minute mark and it was a bit of a gift from hapless Leicester. James Maddison passed straight to Enock Mwepu in midfield.

The Computer had suffered a malfunction in the 2-1 midweek defeat to Fulham. His continued presence in the starting XI raised some eyebrows but what came next fully justified Potter’s faith.

Mwepu charged 40 yards up the pitch unchallenged with the ball. He then fed Moises Caicedo joining the attack to the right for the future Ballon d’Or winner to lash across Ward and put the Albion into the lead.

Leicester’s next present to Brighton came when Ward and Wilfred Ndidi got in a right mess when attempting to pass to each other. Welbeck nipped in to steal the ball but his dinked shot was a little too high, dropping onto the roof of the net.

The Albion defence took inspiration from what was going in amongst their Foxes counterparts, conspiring to gift Leicester an equaliser in terrible fashion on 33 minutes.

Webster and Veltman were pushed far too high up the pitch for a side defending a single goal lead with half time approaching. When Webster then played a woeful diagonal straight to the visitors, Brighton were in big trouble.

Tielemans spotted the chance to put Daka into a footrace with Dunk. A 70 yard pass came over the top of the Albion captain and he bizarrely opted to try some sort of overhead kick clearance, only to completely the miss the ball. That left Daka one-on-one with Sanchez. An equaliser was the predictable outcome.

Rarely do you see Potter express frustration on the sidelines. He was very clearly upset with what his back line had produced as the sides trooped into the break locked at 2-2.

It could feasibly have been 3-3 as both sides passed up a good opportunity each in the time left between Daka scoring and the half time whistle.

Ward flapped a Gross corner over the bar and Sanchez had his first piece of work to do – other than picking the ball out of the back of the net twice – when making a good reflex stop from Barnes.

Trossard was the guilty party in gifting the ball to Leicester on that occasion as sloppiness in possession continued. At that point, it looked like the game could finish Brighton 12-12 Leicester.

Whatever Potter said during the interval had the desired impact. Rather than the second half being another goal fest for both teams, it was the Albion who motored away with an outrageous display that led to that final score of Brighton 5-2 Leicester.

First came that terrible VAR decision to deny Mac Allister the goal of the season. A Gross free kick was cleared to Mac Allister 25 yards out.

Mac Allister hit a stonking volley on the run without breaking stride that nearly broke the net as it arrowed into the top corner with Ward utterly helpless.

Nobody in the Amex could see anything wrong with it. Not one single Leicester player appealed. Some gimp watching on television at Stockley Park however replayed the goal and drew a wonky line to claim Mwepu was a millimetre offside. Mwepu. Who was not involved in the goal in any way, shape or form.

The VAR check took four minutes to complete, after which the goal was ruled out. Talk about sucking the fun out of football.

What is the point in the game if supporters and players cannot celebrate a moment of magic like Mac Allister’s thunderbastard shot for fear of VAR finding an excuse to disallow it?

It was yet another decision which drew ire from across the board on a weekend when VAR came under the spotlight like never before. Anyone who believes that the system has improved the sport in this country needs their head examined.

Brighton added their third on 62 minutes and there was nothing VAR could do to cancel this one. Mac Allister glided around a couple of men and found Gross to poke through to Trossard.

The Vampire of Genk did the rest, beating Ward for his second of the season. Chalk up another assist for Gross, too. Der Kaiser is irresistible at the moment.

A one goal lead was never going to be enough in such a crazy game. Daka showed that when he came close to giving Leicester an instant response, dragging wide of the post when he should have at least hit the target.

Brighton needed to move further ahead and they duly did when Trossard ticked his way across the by-line and went down in the box under a clumsy trip from Ndidi.

Mac Allister confidently scored the resulting penalty, making it three from three so far this season. We are almost at the stage where Albion fans have stopped cowering whenever the Seagulls are awarded a spot kick or watching reluctantly through their fingers with hands covering eyes.

It was a weird feeling after Brighton went 4-2 up. You believed that there were more goals in it for the Seagulls. Yet at the same time it would have been no surprise at all if Leicester scored twice more in the final 10 minutes to level it up.

In the end, there was just one more goal which made it Brighton 5-2 Leicester. With wonderful irony, it came from Mac Allister in the fifth minute of stoppage time caused as a direct result of the four minutes it had taken VAR to rule out his earlier stunner.

This goal which actually stood was nearly as good as thar previous strike, a beautiful free kick curled into top corner from 25 yards.

That capped a magnificent second half display in perfect fashion. Brighton 5-2 Leicester. Five goals scored in a Premier League game. Fourth place in the table. Is this the real life?