Match Review: Brighton 0-0 Watford
We’ve witnessed some stunning displays from opposition goalkeepers against Brighton and Hove Albion through the years.
Neville Southall was 41 years old and weighed nearly as much in stone when Torquay United visited Withdean in August 1999. But despite being heavier than one of the moons of Jupiter, the Albion could find no way around him as he pulled off what felt like over a thousand outrageous saves as Torquay returned to Devon with a 1-0 win.
A year later and Alan Marriott’s heroics for Lincoln City saw the Imps triumph 2-0 at Sincil Bank with a performance that nearly cost Micky Adams his job as it extended the Albion’s dismal start to the 2000-01 season. The Albion would go onto be crowned Division Three Champions nine months later.
In the Amex era, one of the best performances of Sami Hyypia’s reign of terror came against Cardiff City but it proved to be worth only a point after Bluebirds’ goalkeeper David Marshall pulled off five unbelievable second half stops in a 1-1 draw.
Now, you can add Ben Foster to the list. The former England international made three utterly ridiculous saves to single handedly earn Watford a point at the Amex. Without him, Brighton would have comfortably beaten a side pushing for a spot in Europe.
When we went to Watford on the opening day of the season, we wrote afterwards that Foster was so underemployed that he could’ve spent the first half reading the entirety of War and Peace and written a 10,000 word review of it on Amazon. In the second half, he had enough time to invent a flying car and develop a way to time travel.
This time around, it was Maty Ryan who had 90 minutes spare to dissect a Leo Tolstoy novel or work out a way to pop back to the 17th century. Watford didn’t manage one shot on target all afternoon. They didn’t even manage to force a corner.
Such a strong defensive showing just four days after we’d capitulated to concede four times in 45 minutes away at Fulham was most welcome.
There had been some concern that the back four might have suffered from post traumatic stress disorder such was the ordeal that they went through at Craven Cottage, but here they were earning a well-deserved clean sheet by sticking everything on the line – Lewis Dunk even making a ground tackle with his face in one of the more surreal sights of the season.
The shutout was particularly good news for Gaetan Bong. Bong has fast been approaching Ashley Barnes levels of hatred among the Twitterati in recent weeks.
If you listen to some of the comments on social media, he’s been responsible for everything that went wrong at Fulham, the previous league defeat at Manchester United, conceding twice in a couple of minutes at West Ham United (even though he wasn’t on the pitch at the time), Brexit, Sally Webster being banged up in Coronation Street and Joe Sugg not winning Strictly.
Here, Bong gave one of his best performances of the season. He defended well, got forward brilliantly and more than played his part in keeping a dangerous Watford attack quiet.
There’s no doubting that he isn’t as good as Bernardo – but just because the Brazilian is better than him, it doesn’t make Bong Jamie Campbell levels of bad. Bong provides solid back up and only an idiot could find fault with his showing on Saturday. Sadly, we have a fair few of those among our fan base.
To the game itself, and the first half was a complete non event. The highlight in the West Upper was someone handing around a bag of Colin and Connie Caterpillars. In the West Lower, somebody tweeted a photo of a man who had actually fallen asleep, head back, mouth open and all.
There was only one shot on target in that opening 45 minutes, Foster setting the tone for his afternoon when acrobatically keeping out a Jurgen Locadia header from a Pascal Gross cross.
The second half was far more entertaining as the Albion were extremely positive in their approach. Within a minute of the restart, Foster was having to claw a Solly March corner out of the top corner as the winger nearly scored direct from the set piece.
Foster’s real heroics came in the final 11 minutes though. On 79, he tipped away another Locadia header from another Gross cross. From the resulting corner, Shane Duffy of all people attempted an overhead kick and even more remarkable than the sight of the Irish defender performing something that graceful was the fact it nearly bloody worked. Foster only managed to turn it around the post after a desperate run and lunge across goal that no 36-year-old has any right to be making.
Substitute Florin Andone then burst through to find himself one-on-one with Foster but the goalkeeper stayed big and made a sprawling block with his body to deny the Romanian, who had only been introduced a matter of minutes beforehand.
Andone’s entrance to the game was one of the main talking points afterwards as it came amid something of a baffling decision from Chris Hughton. Brighton were dominating both possession and the shot count, which would surely have made it the perfect moment in time to pair Andone with Glenn Murray and double the Albion’s firepower.
Instead, Hughton did nothing to dash rumours that he has a genuine medical phobia of making tactical adjustments, choosing to withdraw Murray for Andone in a like-for-like swap.
The fact it was the sole change he made also left some supporters scratching their heads. While Locadia may have only been denied a goal by two excellent Foster stops, he also managed to put a shot when front and centre of the goal out for a throw and must have placed more passes out of play than he managed to get to fellow men in blue and white.
That made for frustrating viewing, especially with Anthony Knockaert and Alireza Jahanbakhsh after his return from the Asian Cup kicking their heels on the bench. Could either of those have made a difference? In the form that Foster was in, probably not. But it might have been nice to find out.
Hughton said afterwards, “If we hadn’t created chances today, I’d be more worried and frustrated. On another day, the goals will come.” And he is right. Nine times out of 10, a second half performance like that would be good enough to beat most other sides outside of the top six.
The challenge now is to repeat it. Slowly, the relegation zone is beginning to creep back into picture in the Albion’s rear view mirror. Cardiff City are now just five points behind following their 2-0 win over Plucky Little Bournemouth.
Our home games coming up against Burnley, Huddersfield and Southampton now look crucial. Frankly, if we don’t win at least one of those then we probably deserve to go down.
Play like we did against Watford and we can win all three. After all, we won’t see a better goalkeeping show than Foster’s again for some time.
