Match Preview: Brighton v Manchester City

Three days after facing the newly crowned Premier League champions Liverpool, we find ourselves writing a match preview for Brighton versus the title winners from the previous two seasons, Manchester City. It is a brutal reminder of how tough the top flight of English football is.

Facing Pep Guardiola’s billion pound squad is a daunting prospect, even if they have surrendered their title to Anfield. A ‘disappointing’ year for City could yet yield a first ever Champions League title and the retention of the FA Cup to go with the Camila Cabello Cup they won back in February.

The good news for Brighton is that City’s eyes may be firmly on the two prizes they could yet lift. If that is the case, then they could take their feet off the gas at the Amex.

The bad news of course is that even when City play at half-effort, they are still better than most other teams in world football – as Newcastle United found out when they were hammered 5-0 at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday night.

Gulp.

(Disclaimer: The following match preview is written by WeAreBrighton.com, an independent fan site. None of the views are that of Tony Bloom, Paul Barber or Brighton & Hove Albion FC themselves. In case you hadn’t realised.)

A brief history of Manchester City
Manchester City used to be known as the football club who weird, wonderful and odd things happened to. “Typical City” was the phrase and it endeared them to a lot of neutrals, especially given that they spent most of their history living in the shadow of their much more successful rivals from across town, Manchester United.

All that changed in 2008 though when Sheikh Mansour bought the club, turning City into the richest team in the world overnight – and the biggest sportswashing job on the planet at the time.

Sheikh Mansour’s wealth meant that most City supporters were happy to turn a blind eye to the fact that he is the unelected deputy leader of a nation where slavery is practised, being homosexual is punishable by death and any critics of the government including foreign journalists are locked up, often without trial.

Strangely, none of this seemed to bother the football authorities either, which is in stark contrast to the protracted Saudi takeover at Newcastle United.

A cynic might suggest that the interest in blocking new owners at St James’ Park is because Saudi Arabi don’t pay their fair share for Premier League television rights, as opposed to any concern for human rights.

The United Arab Emirates have a suitable broadcast deal, so everyone can happily sing to City’s tune in spite of the abuses which are well documented in that part of the world.

Anyway, we digress. Back to City, where Sheik Mansour’s sportswashing has been extremely successful. When most football fans hear the words ‘Abu Dhabi’, they now associate it with Sergio Aguero’s goals, Kevin De Bruyne’s brilliance, Guardiola’s football and how great City are to watch. Rather than slave labour and a lack of freedom of speech.

Since Abu Dhabi’s investment arrived, City have won four Premier League titles, two FA Cups, five League Cups and three Community Shields. With so much success, it is little wonder their supporters don’t care about how it is funded.

Manchester City this season
As we mentioned at the start of our match preview, Manchester City come to Brighton with their league season at least over. It would take a spectacular collapse for them not to finish as runners up, allowing full attention to be diverted towards those other two competitions.

City’s motivation to win the Champions League this season is even greater than normal after UEFA banned them from European competitions for two years for a breach of financial fair play rules.

The case has gone as far as the Court of Arbitration for Sport, with a verdict on City’s appeals set to be announced on Monday. Word on the street is that City will be cleared, hardly a surprise given that they can afford the finest legal minds on the planet.

They also have a ruthless approach to these sort of things, going after journalists behind closed doors for any critical coverage – which explains why you read so little about sportswashing and human rights in UAE from our nation’s sports writers, compared to say the coverage that the travesty of a World Cup in Qatar in 2022 receives.

There would be no better way for City to stick two fingers up to UEFA than by not only being exonerated of any wrongdoing by CAS, but then winning Europe’s biggest prize for the first time in their history. It almost seems written in the stars.

Brighton’s head-to-head record with Manchester City
The head-to-head record does not make for particularly good reading for Brighton fans with our match preview having to report that we have won just four times in 23 attempts against Manchester City.

The most recent of those came in the 1988-89 season, a 2-1 win at the Goldstone Ground which is better remembered for being the game that saw 41-year-old chief ball boy Keith Cuss sacked for time wasting.

Brighton were defending their slender lead in the final minutes when the ball flew towards Cuss. Rather than catch and return it to City, Keith instead threw back his neck and headed the ball up into the air, over the small section of terracing at the north end of the West Stand and out of the ground.

City were incensed and called for Keith to be fired. The story made the national press and Brighton bowed to pressure from the bigger club, getting rid of a popular Goldstone employee in the process.

Other memorable Albion matches against City include an FA Cup semi final and one of the biggest shocks in League Cup history, but frankly nothing can top a 41-year-old ball boy getting sacked for deliberate time wasting, so why even mention them?

(We do of course mention them in our full review of the history of Brighton versus Manchester City).

Last six meetings
• Manchester City 4-0 Brighton (Premier League, 31/08/19)
• Brighton 1-4 Manchester City (Premier League, 12/05/19)
• Brighton 0-1 Manchester City (FA Cup, 06/04/19)
• Manchester City 2-0 Brighton (Premier League, 29/09/18)
• Manchester City 3-1 Brighton (Premier League, 09/05/18)
• Brighton 0-2 Manchester City (Premier League, 12/08/17)

Brighton are yet to take a point off City since winning promotion to the Premier League in 2017. The disparity between the two sides is shown by the fact that most of the past six meetings have been convincing wins for the Citizens, bar last April’s FA Cup semi final.

That might have been a different game had Kyle Walker not somehow escaped a red card for headbutting Alireza Jahanbakhsh in the first half. An early sign of the farce that VAR could cause before it had been fully adopted by the Premier League.

August’s 4-0 defeat was a little bit of a red herring too as the Albion actually played quite competently at the Etihad. Guardiola had praised for Graham Potter and his players afterwards as we really should have scored at least twice, only for poor finishing to let us down.

Team news
Potter said in his preview press conference that he was conscious of the amount of fixtures Brighton have faced in the lead up to Manchester City coming to the Amex. He also seemed to imitate that Thursday night’s trip to Southampton is a game that he will target for points, rather than this one.

All of which means we might get to take another spin of the Potter selection wheel as fringe players come in and position roulette takes place. As a result, there is no point in trying to guess what Potter will get up to, but one hunch is that Tariq Lamptey might be rested.

Manchester City’s key players
Christ, where do you start? Aguero is at least out injured, which means that City are shorn of the one player who always seems to score against us.

Instead, Brighton only need to worry about David Silva, Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus, Phil Foden and De Bruyne. The Belgian play maker in particular has been an utter joy to watch this season and frankly, it will be a travesty if he doesn’t win the PFA Player of the Year award at the end of it.

A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Manchester City at home
Everyone has their own favourite part of Brighton beating Manchester City in the League Cup at Withdean back in 2008. Ours is the sight of a Brighton fan in a wheelchair joining in the pitch invasion from the disabled section in the south west corner, only to be turned around as he made his way to the centre circle by a killjoy steward. A seriously underrated Withdean moment.

A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Manchester City at home
Last season’s 4-1 home defeat was bitter sweet. On the one hand, Bruno received the send off he deserved having announced his retirement in the run up to the game. There weren’t many dry eyes in the house when he gave his teary farewell speech. Once a seagull, always a seagull.

On the other, it was a real disappointment that Chris Hughton wasn’t afforded the same. The Albion have been keen to stress that nobody at the club knew that Tony Bloom was planning to sack his manager until the Monday morning after the game.

And yet, as we were sat in The Caxton on Sunday night, we received a message saying to have a look at Oddschecker as Swansea’s Graham Potter had been backed in massively as favourite to be the next Brighton boss.

Either there were some punters out there with out-of-this-world clairvoyance skills to predict that Hughton was going to be sacked and replaced by the manager of the Championship’s 10th placed team, or people other than Bloom knew what was coming.

In which case, Hughton could have been given an equally deserved goodbye.

Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Manchester City
The tributes paid to Michael Robinson when he passed away back in April said everything about the esteem in which he was held by Albion fans.

Not only was he a fine player who remains Brighton’s record goalscorer in the top flight, but he was also a bloody great bloke. And he voiced the Ugly Sister in the Spanish language version of Shrek 2. How many other former Seagulls have gone onto be a part of a major Hollywood movie franchise?

What do we like about Manchester
The WAB team stayed in Manchester on the Friday night before our match at the Etihad, coming across the greatest curry house in England near the city’s famous Canal Street.

Add that to the great pubs, friendly people and rich history that make Manchester one of the best places to visit in the United Kingdom. So everything, basically.

Prediction
The Albion showed against Liverpool that on current form, Potterball can give the best teams in the country a bit of a fright. Yet while Anfield may have the title, Manchester City still look the most formidable team on paper and that makes it had to predict anything other than a Brighton defeat to finish our match preview. 2-1 to City.