Match Review: Brighton 0-2 Leicester City
In the aftermath of a defeat, you can spend hours talking tactics, dissecting game plans and discussing team selection to try and work out what went wrong. On some occasions though, you just have to admit that you’ve been beaten by a better team.
That was the case at the Amex on when Leicester City came to town. We saw firsthand why they are currently second in the table and Liverpool’s closest pursuers. Without Maty Ryan, 2-0 could easily have been five or six.
The way that Leicester have built their title challenge is impressive. At the top, Brendan Rodgers is proving himself to be one of the finest managers in the country one again after cruising through a couple of years in the Scottish Pub League with Celtic.
They’ve got an exciting team full of young English talents who play some scintillating football at times. While Manchester City rely on the petrodollars of a billionaire who is part of a ruling class that punishes homosexuality by death in Abu Dhabi among a whole host of other human rights issues, Leicester have built an exciting team full of young English talents, many of whom have been plucked from the Championship.
Not many clubs could sell an England international defender for £85m and know that they don’t need to spend a penny to replace him.
Why? Because their recruitment strategy is that good. A year earlier they’d picked up a young Turkish defender called Caglar Soyuncu from Freiburg, knowing that one day soon Harry Maguire would be sold.
When that day arrived, they’d have a ready made replacement waiting in the wings. Not just ready made, but on this season’s showings so far, even better.
Soyuncu’s emergence is good news for the Albion too. Upon Maguire’s departure, it seemed a case of when rather than if Leicester would launch a bid for Lewis Dunk. Now we know that the Albion captain won’t be going to the King Power Stadium anytime soon.
The Foxes’ transfer business has been so good that they don’t need Dunk. Which is just as well because if they did, Dunk would be mad not to make the move.
Those Albion fans who were shouting from the rooftops that Dunk would never leave Brighton for Leicester because Leicester wouldn’t be a step up are being made to look very silly. Challenging for a Champions League spot or fighting a relegation battle? Tough one, that.
Dunk was suspended for the visit of his once-suitors, not that his presence would have made much difference. Leicester’s football was scintillating at times and the game should have been done and dusted long before half time arrived and people were paying out for their £3.20 bag of Starburst.
That it wasn’t was down to a combination of Ryan and the woodwork. Ayoze Perez hit the bar inside the opening couple of minutes.
Ryan’s two best saves saw him react superbly to push a Jamie Vardy header over the bar and then get a vital touch on Pere’z shot to turn it around the post.
Kasper Schmeichel up the other end didn’t have a save to make in the first half. Or in the second for that matter. He probably didn’t require a shower afterwards because he was that underemployed. Even when Leicester had set a top flight record by winning 9-0 away at Southampton a month ago, Schmeichel had more to do.
It can’t have coincidence that Graham Potter decided to drop our most creative player in Pascal Gross with the result being zero shots on target across the 90 minutes.
Gross has been in excellent form this season, so it was a peculiar decision to axe him. Presumably, it was made because Potter isn’t convinced by Gross as one of the front three in his 3-4-3 formation which made its return at the expense of 4-2-2-2.
Could Gross have fitted in? We think so. He started the opening day win away at Watford on the right of the front three and claimed an assist at Vicarage Road for the first goal, but since then Potter has failed to start him whenever he has used the formation, preferring Aaron Mooy here. Strange.
For all the mystery surrounding Gross’ exclusion, the reasoning behind the formation change was fairly obvious. Potter wanted to revert to a back three for two reasons; the first being that Dunk was suspended and so Shane Duffy, Adam Webster and Dan Burn would offer more protection to Ryan.
The second was that, in theory, it meant that the Albion defence could try and mark man-for-man Leicester’s attacking triumvirate of Vardy, Perez and Harvey Barnes. Given that those three offered a more testing afternoon than a BBC interview with Prince Andrew, whether the decision worked is very much up for debate.
Webster didn’t look fit at times, hardly a surprise given he was supposed to be out for up to five weeks following injury but he was rushed back after just three.
Duffy meanwhile didn’t really take the opportunity to prove that he can cope with the demands of Potter’s football. There was one wonderful moment when the Albion were knocking it along the back line, five or six passes had been completed as we tried to play our way out trouble when Duffy then just hoofed it into touch. A penny for Potter’s thoughts at that point in time.
Not that we mind someone leathering the ball clear. Sometimes, it has to be done. Take Leicester’s second goal for example when the Albion had several opportunities to clear their lines.
They failed to take any of them, most criminally when Davy Propper tired to produce a back heel on the edge of our own box. When that went awry, the ball fell straight to Demari Gray who a few seconds later was being clumsily felled by Webster in the area.
Vardy saw his penalty saved but James Maddison scored from the rebound. VAR though had spotted encroachment in the box and so the kick was retaken, this time Vardy making no mistake to beat Ryan and seal victory for the Foxes with eight minutes remaining.
Leicester’s first had arrived around 20 minutes earlier and it was the Foxes at their very best. At one end, a Brighton attack had broken down when Solly March’s attempted ball into the box was headed clear.
Eight seconds and a couple of passes later and Vardy had left Martin Montoya for dust and crossed to Perez who had the simple task of tapping the ball home. It was as devastating as it was brilliant.
On what we saw at the Amex, Leicester are the best opponents we’ve faced in the Premier League so far. That could all change next week though, when we’ve got a nice little jaunt up to Anfield to face Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool – you know, the team who’ve dropped two points out of 39 all season. It doesn’t get any easier, does it?
