Match Review: Brighton 4-0 Portsmouth

For a club who have found the League Cup to be an incredibly cruel mistress in the past, Brighton & Hove Albion’s 4-0 win over Portsmouth was about as perfect an outcome as the Seagulls have had for some time in this particular competition.

Victory saw the Albion hammer those little oiks from along the south coast. Graham Potter got 90 minutes into his fringe players without resorting to treating the League Cup as a creche, as he did in last season’s exit to Aston Villa.

We scored four times in a game for the first time since 2018, something that should not be taken lightly given that goals have been hard to come by. And we now have a winnable tie in round three against Preston North End with a potential Wembley final just four victories away.

In this strangest of seasons in which fans cannot attend games, Wembley seems like an even bigger draw than normal. Imagine a world in which you have not been able to see the Albion live for over a year… and then one of you first games back is a final under the arch with the opportunity of witnessing Brighton win a major trophy for the first time in 120 years?

Yes, plenty would have to come together for all that happen. A second spike of coronavirus needs to be avoided and the government would have to stop cocking everything up as they have done since about June, but stranger things have happened. Brighton scoring four goals in a game, for example.

If Potter plays his reserves rather than his Under 12s, then the Albion could go far based on this evidence. It is testament to the strength that the Seagulls have in their squad that the Brighton boss could make 11 changes and still name a team which cost £51 million to put together and included six full internationals.

There was a first spin of the Potter Roulette selection wheel which landed on starting five central midfielders. Davy Propper, Dale Stephens, Alexis Mac Allister, Pascal Gross and Jayson Molumby were all crammed into the line up with Molumby drawing the short straw of playing out of position at right back.

The Irish international ended up rattling through three positions over the course of the 90 minutes, showing the sort of versatility that Potter loves and which has made Steve Alzate such an important part of his team plans.

If Molumby can have as good a breakthrough season in 2020-21 as Alzate managed last time out, then the Albion have quite a player on their hands.

Brighton took a while to get going but once things clicked and they notched their opener, the floodgates opened and they played some excellent stuff on their way to beating Portsmouth 4-0.

Mac Allister got the party started with his first goal in Brighton colours seven minutes before half time. It was a move that cost £28 million to put together as Pompey gave away possession, Gross fed Alireza Jahanbakhsh and his pinpoint cross was powered home by Mac Allister.

It was an excellent header from Mac Allister which underlined his rich potential. If you cannot compare a 21-year-old Argentinian to Lionel Messi after a goal against League One Portsmouth, then when can you compare a 21-year-old Argentinian to Lionel Messi?

Jahanbakhsh added the second with the goal of the night nine minutes into the second half. The Iranian has not scored anywhere near enough for a signing who cost £17 million, but when he does hit the back of the net they tend to be spectacular.

His third Brighton goal in his 38th appearance was certainly that, a powerful shot from 20 yards that flew into the top corner of the Pompey goal.

It was the least Prince Ali deserved for a man-of-the-match showing down the right and his status as something of a cult hero grew after the game when he used the term “working my socks off” in a post game interview – the sort of phrase which you associate with your granddad from Eastbourne, not a 27-year-old from the city of Jirandeh in Iran.

Bernardo added the third three minutes later on what was a strange night for the Brazilian left back. In the first half, he looked absolutely dreadful with Potter’s phobia of picking up suddenly appearing to be very much justified.

Did Bernardo not realise that this was a rare opportunity to put himself into first team contention? Somebody must have had a word at half time as it was a much improved second 45 minutes, rounded off by a fine header from a typically pinpoint Gross corner.

The Albion seemed to be enjoying themselves now and Bernardo turned provider for the goal which made it Brighton 4-0 Portsmouth with 20 minutes left to play.

Swedish forward Viktor Gyokeres was the scorer, finding some space to turn and hit a clinical low shot past Craig MacGillivray. It may have only been against League One opposition, but it was exactly the sort of chance that we have seen Neal Maupay and Aaron Connolly squander far too regularly over the past year.

Does that mean that Gyokeres is the answer to Albion’s striker crisis? Probably not. You would not feel confident about him scoring regularly in the Premier League and the final goal in a 4-0 rout over Portsmouth does not make him the perfect Brighton replacement for Glenn Murray.

Potter still needs to go and sign a centre forward. What Gyokeres does bring is a bit of variety to the attack as a stronger player, decent with his head and capable of playing with his back to goal.

If the Albion ended the transfer window with Connolly and Maupay representing one type of centre forward and Gyokeres and a new target man representing another, then things would look a lot more rosy in the Brighton striker’s garden than they currently do.

That is a very big if though, given that all of Potter’s and Paul Barber’s comments to the media in recent weeks seem to be calculated to convince fans that Brighton do not need another striker. How many more times will we hear “silver bullet” between now and October?

At the other end to Gyokeres, Jason Steele pulled off a quite unbelievable save at full stretch from Sean Raggett’s header. Steele has now recorded two clean sheets in his two competitive appearances to date for Brighton, a fact that he will no doubt be celebrating with extra pepperoni on his Sunday pizza in The Station and a couple more pints than normal.

Fingers crossed that there will be plenty more for Steele and the stiffs to celebrate in the coming months in the League Cup. The chance to become the first Brighton team to win away at Preston since 1908 awaits in the next round.

The winners of that then face either Manchester United or Luton Town. United have much bigger fish to fry which makes that a winnable game for the Albion and beating Luton would be sweet revenge for that Paint Pot Southern Section Final defeat in 2009 which denied us a chance of a Wembley final.

Win those two games and we are suddenly two wins away from getting to Wembley in the altogether more glamorous League Cup. Keep taking the competition this seriously please, Graham.