Match Review: Brighton 1-1 Leicester City
For those who booed Brighton and Hove Albion off following the 1-1 draw with Leicester City and have openly begun questioning Chris Hughton’s suitability to do the job, you only have to look at the Foxes bench for an example of “be careful what you wish for”.
Sat in the managers chair is Claude Puel, a bloke who was sacked by Southampton after their supporters relentless complaining about his negative football. Puel had “only” managed to lead the Saints to eighth place in the Premier League and the League Cup final before being replaced by Mauricio Pellegrino.
Saints fans desire to see someone better than Puel take charge led to them only escaping relegation from the top flight on the final day of last season. By that point, Pellegrino was gone with Mark Hughes at the helm and they are not faring much better this season by currently being in the bottom three.
Our friends along the South Coast had ideas way above their station, sacked their manager and have subsequently gone from being a regular top 10 finisher to a side who could well be in the Championship next season. Be careful what you wish for, indeed.
Only drawing against a side who played for over an hour with 10 men was a frustrating experience, especially given the lacklustre second half showing. But you also have to recognise that Leicester are a better team than Brighton. They won the Premier League three seasons ago, their squad is packed with quality and when you can throw on one of England’s best strikers in Jamie Vardy from the bench, you are always going to be dangerous even if you are playing short handed.
Plenty of the complaints in the aftermath focus on the fact that we sat back in the second half, but that ignores that Leicester made it extremely difficult for us to do anything else. It’s an established fact that this Brighton team struggles against opposition who press aggressively.
Our terrible record in the last three meetings with Huddersfield Town, the fact we lost by an aggregate score of 9-1 to Liverpool last season and that Leicester remain the only side outside of the top five to have left the Amex with a Premier League victory all point to that.
As soon as Vardy came on, Leicester had the pace in attack to press the Albion aggressively. As a result, we were pretty much pinned back in our half and there was little that Hughton could do to change it. Throw on Jurgen Locadia or Florin Andone for a bit of pace of our own and try and play on the counter? That would mean sacrificing Glenn Murray and seeing as he has over 40% of the Albion’s goals this season, you can’t really argue that withdrawing your only goal scorer at home against 10 men is a positive move.
Despite Leicester’s dominance in the second half, we might have seen the game out had Beram Kayal not been so brain dead. You know what you get with the Israeli midfielder and he will put in some stupid challenges but rarely in stupid areas. His foul on Kelechi Iheanacho was a definite penalty and referee Chris Kavanagh was spot on with the decision, giving Vardy the chance to send Ryan the wrong way for the equaliser.
Unlike the absolute shower that was the refereeing performance out in by Martin Atkinson in the 2-1 defeat at Cardiff, Mr Kavanagh had a good game. Sending off James Maddison so early was a bold call but the right one. He only had to make the cynical foul which earned the first booking because Mr Kavanagh had inadvertently knocked the ball into Anthony Knockaert’s path to send the Frenchman away.
As for the second booking, most of the ground thought it was a stonewall penalty at the time. That was certainly the opinion of the majority of the West Stand, but replays later showed that Maddison went down with no contact and Mr Kavanagh was spot on to send him off. Fair play to Maddison for admitting as much afterwards.
So the officials couldn’t take any of the blame for Brighton’s failure to pick up all three points. Pascal Gross did “score” in the first half but it was deemed to be offside, a decision which at the time looked correct but with the benefits of having it slowed down to processional pace was actually wrong. Kasper Schmeichel’s reaction to that of a man whose throwing a paddy because he has just realised he isn’t the best goalkeeper in his family was pathetic.
It was Murray’s 101st Albion goal that gave the Seagulls the lead in the first half. The marking from Knockaert’s corner was all but non-existent but credit Murray for making a beautiful run to the front post and meeting the ball in with an even better header. From only scoring once from a set piece all last season, we’re now regularly threatening in dead ball scenarios with every goal scored in November coming from a free kick or corner. That’s one positive from Saturday.
The other was the performance of Bernardo. It’s been a bit of a struggle adapting to life in England since his £9m move from Red Bull Leipzig, not helped by having to switch from his preferred left back position to right back just 20 minutes into his debut away at Watford after Bruno went off injured.
Bernardo looked every bit the fifth most expensive signing in Albion history here though and was rightly awarded the man-of-the-match award. It’s now up to him to hold onto the shirt as he was a significant upgrade on Gaetan Bong’s recent performances, offering genuine competition for the left back position.
Hughton said afterwards he was disappointed with the team for not carrying out his instructions to get forward more, but that ignores the point that it was difficult to do so given how much energy and pressure Leicester were exerting. Rather than worrying about letting a lead slip against 10 men or why we didn’t make any changes until the final 15 minutes, the Albion boss needs to find a way to stop his team being so dominated by sides that press.
With a massive, massive game against a Huddersfield Town side who do just that coming up soon as well as matches against two more sides below us in the table in Burnley and Crystal Palace, he needs to find answers sooner rather than later. But now is not the time to panic – you just need to look at the Leicester bench to realise that.
