Match Preview: Brighton v Plucky Little Bournemouth
New Year’s Day 2008. Gordon Brown was the Prime Minister. Jimmy Saville was still a sir. The iPhone had been on the market for one month. Aaron Mooy had a full head of hair. Aaron Connolly was seven-years-old. And you could still have a bottle of £1.50 VK in The Event or Creation.
It was also the last time that Brighton managed to beat Bournemouth in a league game. Alex Revell hit a hat-trick that day at Withdean as Dean Wilkin’s Albion squeaked past the Cherries 3-2 in front of 5,963 supporters.
Since that afternoon, we’ve met in League One, the Championship and the Premier League. 10 matches across three divisions and a big fat zero in the win column for the Albion.
There’d be no better time to change that than in the final game of the decade. For all the praise that has come the way of Graham Potter and his Brighton side for their football so far this season, defeat against Bournemouth coupled with wins for West Ham United and Aston Villa would drop the Seagulls into the relegation zone.
With Potter resting players for the Boxing Day defeat at Tottenham Hotspur, he’s effectively said that this is the game he expects to get three points from. Which makes it a massive afternoon at the Amex.
A brief history of Bournemouth
Athletic Football Club Bournemouth to give them their full name were formed in 1899 as Boscombe St. John’s Institute FC – which sounds more like a mental hospital than a football club. For the first 112 years of their existence, Bournemouth spent most of their time bouncing around the bottom two divisions, slipping in and out of administration for good measure.
All that changed in 2011 when Russian oligarch Maxim Demin bought the club. Now, the official narrative that is peddled by the media and Bournemouth themselves is that the Cherries rise from League Two to top flight is a fairy tale produced by Eddie Howe with nothing more than a bag of magic beans and an old cow.
The truth is rather different, of course. Denim has pumped in millions of his roubles, allowing Bournemouth to reach and compete in the Premier League. They completely ignored Financial Fair Play Rules in their 2014-15 Championship promotion season, racking up losses of £38.3m in a single year. Back in 2015, the rules allowed clubs to make a loss of £6m, so Bournemouth only exceeded that figure by over six times. A truly magical story at the Vitality Stadium.
Bournemouth this season
Of course, it’s all very well having this plethora of cash to spend – but you’ve got to do it wisely and then have a manager in place who can deliver value for money. In Howe, Bournemouth certainly have that. Despite their undoubted financial doping, Howe has done an excellent job in keeping the Cherries in the top flight for what is now a fifth consecutive season.
This one is turning into their hardest yet however, largely due to inconsistency. While Bournemouth have beaten the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Everton, they’ve also lost to Newcastle, Crystal Palace and Burnley. On their day, the Cherries can trouble the best teams in the land – but they seem to be having fewer of those good days this season than in years gone by. Fingers crossed for another bad one at the Amex.
Head-to-head
Given the way that this fixture has gone over the course of the last 12 years, it will surprise nobody to know that Bournemouth lead the way in the head-to-head. Of the 118 meetings to date, the Cherries have won 49 to Brighton’s 39 with 30 draws.
Not only that, but Bournemouth have also inflicted some truly embarrassing moments on the Albion through the years. Nobody wants to be reminded of April’s 5-0 defeat at the Amex which convinced many of us that Chris Hughton’s race as Brighton boss was sadly run.
Prior that, it was Bournemouth who relegated the Albion into the Fourth Division for the first time when winning 1-0 at Dean Court on Wednesday 8th May 1963, confirming back-to-back demotions from second tier all the way to fourth for the Seagulls.
It was also Bournemouth who were the visitors the first time that the Goldstone’s new North West Terrace, southern end of the East Terrace and Chicken Run were all opened to supporters in 1949. Final score in front of the 20,859 who had packed in to try out the new facilities? Brighton 1-6 Bournemouth.
Brighton’s head-to-head record with Bournemouth
Last six meetings
• Brighton 0-5 Bournemouth (Premier League, 13/04/19)
• Bournemouth 1-3 Brighton (FA Cup Third Round, 05/01/19)
• Bournemouth 2-0 Brighton (Premier League, 22/12/18)
• Brighton 2-2 Bournemouth (Premier League, 01/01/18)
• Bournemouth 1-0 Brighton (League Cup Third Round, 19/09/17)
• Bournemouth 2-1 Brighton (Premier League, 15/09/17)
Let’s not bother with this. It’s more painful than jumping onto a bicycle that has had the saddle removed.
Team news
By resting the likes of Martin Montoya, Davy Propper, Leandro Trossard and Neal Maupay at Spurs, Potter made it very clear which of the two games in 48 hours he was targeting three points from.
All four will probably return, although it’s fair to say that those who stepped in did their chances of future involvement no harm. Ezequiel Schelotto, Bernardo and Steve Alzate all had good games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and should have given Potter plenty of food for thought going forward.
There will be two interesting things to look out for when the teams are announced. One will be who Lewis Dunk – presuming he is over the illness which ruled him out at Spurs – comes in for.
Adam Webster can perhaps count himself lucky that Dunk was unavailable as his place in the starting lineup must surely have been under threat following his Colin Hawkins-esque performance against Sheffield United. Does Dunk return for Webster or Shane Duffy, who many Albion fans believe deserves a run of games due to Webster’s tribulations?
The other talking point will centre around Potter’s formation. Every Brighton manger so far has been tactically outclassed by Howe, which partly explains our shocking record against the Cherries. Howe also held a hoodoo over the Albion in his Burnley days, with the only time that the Albion have beaten a side he has managed coming when Gus Poyet’s Albion won 3-1 at Turf Moor in September 2012.
The limitations of 4-2-2-2 were exposed by Sheffield United. 3-4-3 coaxed a much better performance at Spurs. Which does Potter pick to try and break Brighton’s dreadful form against Bournemouth?
Bournemouth’s key players
The good news for the Albion is that David Brooks hasn’t kicked a ball all season due to a succession of injuries. Brooks was the man that Brighton could have entered the race to sign for £11.5m in the summer of 2018, but Paul Winstanley’s spreadsheet instead told him that £17m would be better spent on Alireza Jahanbakhsh.
While Jahanbakhsh didn’t manage a single goal or assist last season and has only played 30 minutes of Premier League football this time around, Brooks tormented us in both league fixtures in 2018-19.
Winstanley’s spreadsheet also saw us put in a significant bid for Dominic Solanke last January, rumoured to be around £20m. Solanke instead chose to move to Bournemouth, which has turned out to be a significant bullet dodged given that he hasn’t scored in 28 appearances for the Cherries. Odds on him notching his first against us with a winner?
A good WeAreBrighton.com memory of Bournemouth at home
Dick Knight cutting a giant birthday cake on the pitch when Bournemouth came to Withdean in September 2001 was one of the more ridiculous sights you’ll ever see at a game of professional football. The stunt was to mark the 100th anniversary of Brighton’s founding and as was customary during the Withdean days, it was accompanied by a long-winded speech from Mr Knight and a poem from John Baine.
The football was slightly less cringe worthy as Brighton secured a rare win over the Cherries, Paul Watson and an own goal giving the Albion a 2-1 success. The player who put through his own net? It was only Eddie bloody Howe.
A bad WeAreBrighton.com memory of Bournemouth at home
Brighton 0-5 Bournemouth. Heaviest home defeat for 36 years. It doesn’t get any worse than that.
Our favourite player to play for Brighton and Bournemouth
Tommy Elphick was an excellent servant to the Albion who surely would have played many more times for the club had he not spent 14 months on the sidelines, in which time a certain Lewis Dunk established himself in the first team. Elphick was subsequently sold to Bournemouth on his return to fitness needing senior football to re-start his career, and he duly captained the Cherries from League One to the Premier League.
What we like about Bournemouth
It’s a decent venue for a stag do, unless you happen to have go karting down as one of the scheduled activities and you need to be sick while wearing a crash helmet. Which has 100% never happened to a member of the WeAreBrighton.com team.
Prediction
It’s Brighton versus Bournemouth, so an Albion win is about as likely as Paul Barber admitting that Starburst at £3.20 is overpriced. 1-1, a result that isn’t particularly helpful to either party.
