Match Review: Brighton 1-3 Liverpool

The person in charge of the crowd noise for Brighton & Hove Albion 1-3 Liverpool must have been ruing the fact that their sound board did not come with the Benny Hill theme tune.

Forget piped in recordings of “Seagulls, Seagulls”. What the opening seven minutes at the Amex really needed was that distinctive soundtrack of panic and comedy to accompany the Albion gifting the Premier League champions two goals in circumstances that even the most serious Albion fan must have struggled not to laugh at.

It was classic Brighton. Martin Tyler told us before kick off that Jurgen Klopp had not seen his Liverpool side score an away goal for five matches, a run stretching back to February 15th 2020, nearly five months ago.

Long-standing Seagulls supporters know that when opponents have these sort of runs, there is no better side to face than Brighton. Cast your minds back to West Bromwich Albion’s 20 game wait to win under Alan Pardew in the 2017-18 season, ended with a convincing 2-0 win over Brighton at the Hawthorns.

Or the 2014-15 season, when both Birmingham City and Wigan Athletic ended nine month stretches without a home victory by beating the Albion. As recently as January, Graham Potter’s side were able to help Plucky Little Bournemouth win for the first time in 12 weeks.

Even so, the speed with which Brighton gifted Liverpool the goal to end their barren run was remarkable. Just six minutes had elapsed when the Albion got themselves in a right mess attempting a passing triangle on the edge of their own box.

Liverpool’s famous gegenpress put Davy Pröpper in a world of problems, he gave the ball away to Naby Keita who found Mo Salah and the second-best Egyptian to play at the Amex after Adam El-Abd applied the finish. Very Benny Hill.

Less than 120 seconds later and it was Adam Webster’s turn to give out the gifts as he was dispossessed when trying to maraud out from the back with the ball. This time, Jordan Henderson profited to make it 2-0 to Liverpool with less than eight minutes on the clock. More Benny Hill.

At that point in time, it looked like the Albion might manage to outdo Southampton’s 9-0 home defeat against Leicester to set a new top flight record.

Brighton therefore deserve a lot of credit for the way they regrouped against the champions. They recovered superbly and were actually the better side over the course of the next hour. No mean feat against a team who will surely break Manchester City’s record Premier League points tally by the end of the campaign.

Jurgen Klopp said as much afterwards. “I saw two very good teams, both trying to play football. They had a brave formation and set up. I couldn’t respect more what Graham Potter is doing here – they made it a really tough game.”

Two players were central to Liverpool finding their 1-3 win over Brighton tougher than the scoreline suggests – Tariq Lamptey and Leandro Trossard.

Lamptey might have been making only his fourth start for the Albion, but we are already starting to run out of superlatives for him. That he was the best English right back on the pitch at the Amex and Liverpool included Trent Alexander-Arnold in their line up tells you everything you need to know.

Klopp gave a debut to his highly-rated teenage left back Neco Williams. Lamptey gave Williams such a testing time in the first half that Williams had to be withdrawn at the break because Klopp feared he was a second yellow card waiting to happen.

Rather enjoyably, that shut up Jamie Carragher, who had spent the majority of the opening 45 minutes gushing about the talents of Williams in a way that was bordering on creepy at times.

If Williams does go into become the best defender in the world that Carragher seemed to be implying, then Lord knows what Lamptey could achieve in the game given that he is still a teenager himself.

Lamptey played his part in the Brighton goal, a sweeping passing move down the flank which ended with the right back delivering the perfect cross for Trossard to meet with a stonking volley past Allison Becker.

It was beautifully worked, even if Graeme Souness somehow managed to claim that Lamptey’s cross was not a good one during the half time analysis.

Souness needs to stop sniffing glue with punditry like that. Or maybe he is still holding a 36 year grudge over Division Two Brighton eliminating Liverpool from the FA Cup in 1983-84, denying them an historic quadruple as they otherwise won the league, the League Cup and the European Cup that season. Either way, his loathing of Brighton was about as well hidden as a Dominic Cummings drive to Durham.

As for Trossard, he was scoring for the second game running and gave Liverpool’s vaunted defence a tricky time all evening. After starting the season so promisingly, Trossard faded during the winter months before returning from lockdown as one of Brighton’s best players. A bit like a Belgian Paul Brooker, hibernating in the winter.

If he can deliver this sort of scintillating form on a more consistent basis next season, then the Albion have a real player on their hands.

For some context, in a season in which a lot of Brighton supporters have expressed their frustration with Trossard at times, he has still managed more goals than Wilfried Zaha and is level on assists with Crystal Palace’s golden child, who is apparently worth £80 million.

Brighton had their fair share of chances to score other than through Trossard’s goal. The Belgian had been denied earlier in the first half by a brilliant last ditch block from Williams after Pascal Gross’ cross to nobody was not convincingly cleared by Liverpool.

Neal Maupay saw Allison scramble a low shot around the post and Dale Stephens cracked an effort inches over. Unsurprisingly, some Brighton fans laid into Stephens for missing that as the unseemly hatred towards the midfield seemed to crank up another notch in a game in which he was actually one of the Albion’s better performers.

Given that certain Brighton supporters still managed to blame him for the 1-3 defeat to Liverpool, it would not be a surprise to see Stephens being held responsible for the shooting of JFK, 9/11 and the downfall of the Mayan civilisation before long. The scapegoating is getting worse by the week.

The Albion’s best opportunity for an equaliser fell to Dan Burn midway through the second half. Pröpper flicked on Alexis Mac Allister corner to Burn, who had been left completely free at the back post.

The marking was terrible from a Liverpool point of view, but Brighton could not capitalise as Burn resembled a baby giraffe, the ball getting caught under his skyscraper legs as he could only guide it harmfully wide despite having the goal gaping.

That miss was duly punished with 15 minutes remaining as Liverpool showed Burn and Brighton how to ruthlessly punish slack defending from a set piece. Salah was able to escape the attentions of Lamptey far too easily to guide a free header past Ryan at the near post.

While Lamptey let himself down, you have to question why a 5’4 player had been tasked with picking up the 5’9 Salah from set pieces while 6’1 Stephens was given the job of zonally marking the space between six yard box and post.

Even Sunday League teams know that you size match your players when picking up from corners and free kicks. For all the talk of Potter’s tactical genius, this was again an alarming sign of a lack of basics which ended any hopes of a comeback as it made it Brighton 1-3 Liverpool.

That was game over really, but the Albion kept plugging away. Trossard lifted over after Stephens’ fine floated ball created a one-on-one with Allison and Aaron Connolly was unable to celebrate his decision to actively try and look like Phillip Schofield by dragging wide.

It is genuinely hard to think of a worse haircut on a Brighton player than Connolly’s new trim – no mean feat given Nathan Jones played with a dead squirrel attached to his head and Robbie Pethick endured some sort of midlife crisis when thinking it was acceptable for a 34-year-old man to bleach his hair like Eminem.

Salah could have added a fourth with the final chance of the match, but he headed over when the Albion’s marking was again sloppy. It would have been harsh on Brighton if that had gone in, given that they had given Liverpool a tough evening in Klopp’s own words – even if the 1-3 scoreline did not reflect that.

This was a reminder that if you make individual mistakes against the best team in the England, then you will get ruthlessly punished.

It’s a lesson Brighton need to learn and within three days ideally, when Manchester City are next up at the Amex. Cut out the Benny Hill moments against Pep Guardiola’s billion pound squad and who knows what we might be capable of?