Match Review: Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Brighton
Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Brighton. An expected result in a game between last season’s Champions League runners up and a side who have won just three times away from home in 2019. In fact, a side who’ve won just seven league games in 2019 in total.
Graham Potter certainly didn’t think it was a winnable game if his wholesale changes were anything to go by. Martin Montoya, Davy Propper, Leandro Trossard and Neal Maupay were all rested and Lewis Dunk missed out through illness.
A host of forgotten faces took their places. Ezequiel Schelotto made his first start since the final day of the 2017-18 season away at Liverpool. In his previous 90 minutes for the Albion, he’d been given such a runaround by Wilfried Zaha at Selhurst Park that he suffered post traumatic stress disorder.
Bernardo started for the first time since August. Shane Duffy, cast aside in recent weeks because he can’t play a 10 yard pass, also returned for Dunk.
Before kick off, Potter’s selection looked like raising the white flag. He was sacrificing the Spurs game in order to have a full strength, fit and firing XI ready for Plucky Little Bournemouth on Saturday.
Which made it extremely mystifying that so many Albion fans were bemoaning the result come full time in North London. A narrow, unlucky defeat against a team of world class players led by a world class manager when the Seagulls weren’t even at full strength should surely be something to celebrate?
By all means, criticise if we lose at home to Bournemouth – one of only five sides below us in the table now. But Spurs away? Have a day off.
Potter’s selection was intriguing one as there is a very real risk that comes with squad rotation. If you deliberately lessen your chances of winning one game, then you have to get three points from the other to justify it. It adds pressure to a fixture which, if you are prioritising, is probably pretty important already.
The last time we saw such a degree of squad rotation in a relegation battle came during the busy Christmas period in 2005 – and it ultimately what caused many Albion fans to finally lose faith with Mark McGhee.
On December 28th, Brighton went to Luton Town. This was the infamous evening when McGhee decided to pair Federico Turienzo and Mark McCammon up front together in a weakened team with one eye on a home clash with Millwall three days later.
Luton away could have been a winnable fixture in itself – far more winnable than Spurs away 14 years later – yet because of McGhee’s changes, we lost 3-0. Millwall then won 2-1 at Withdean when McGhee reverted back to his full-strength, fully refreshed side.
To compound matters further, we lost 2-1 at Southampton on January 2nd when the manager infamously threw Leon Knight off the team coach in the middle of the New Forest en route to St Mary’s.
Four game over Christmas with only three points delivered – a 1-0 win over Queens Park Rangers on Boxing Day. Which, incidentally, is the last time we won on December 26th.
Now, Potter’s squad rotation is nowhere near as dramatic as McGhee’s, nor is anybody sane going to turn on Potter for deciding that Spurs away was a difficult and probably unwinnable fixture.
It’s undeniable though that he has now put many of his eggs into a beating Bournemouth basket, making a massive game look even bigger. If we lose, the Cherries will leapfrog us in the table. Just one place and two points will separate Brighton and the relegation zone. If West Ham United win their game in hand, we’ll be in the bottom three.
Admittedly, that game in hand is against Liverpool, but would there be a more Typical Brighton way to slip into the relegation places than by Liverpool losing for the first time in over a year? In fact, we’d put money on that being exactly what happens.
Win against Bournemouth and of course Potter’s master plan will be justified. If we play as well as we did against Spurs, then we’ll have every chance of doing so.
But right now, we’d take a 1-0 win over the Cherries with the goal deflecting off Maupay’s testicles over a pretty performance which yields no points. Again.
The most overused line of the season so far from Brighton fans is “If we keep performing like this, points will come.” It’s been heard around the Amex and on social media since September, when we were embarking on a run of one win in the first seven games.
Fast forward three months and we’re still saying it. If it’s still the case in another three months time, we’re suddenly at the beginning of March with nine games left which include fixtures against Arsenal, Leicester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City. See the problem?
But back to Spurs, where Brighton gave it a bloody good go despite the quality of the opposition and the changes made by Potter. For their parts, both Schelotto and Bernardo were excellent in the wing back positions and the Albion love affair with Aaron Mooy continued as he ran the game in the first half.
VAR strengthened its claim for a place in our WAB December Player of the Month shortlist by chalking off another goal conceded by the Albion.
Just like in the 1-0 defeat against Sheffield United on Saturday, a simple ball over the top caught the Albion defence out completely.
Because it was Duffy rather than Adam Webster who was all at a sea, it doesn’t seem to have received the public scrutiny of the previous week, but this was terrible defending from Duffy.
The Irishman was completely unaware of Harry Kane being no more than five yards away from him. Duffy then ducked out of a header, allowing Kane a free run at goal.
Kane duly slipped the ball past the advancing Maty Ryan but luckily, Kane had a fingernail offside and we were again saved by the video referee.
Webster may be considered a disaster waiting to happen at one end of the pitch, but he’s bloody effective at the other as his third goal of the season proved.
Pascal Gross swung over a free kick for yet another assist which was powered home by a beautiful header from Webster. Even Jose Mourinho held his hands up afterwards, saying the delivery and the finish were impossible to defend against.
But hey, Connor, 17 from Lancing, still knows more than one of the most successful managers of all time when he says they are both shit players.
It took about three days to get a beer during the interval despite the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium’s state-of-the-art facilities, which left plenty of time to pause for thought.
The general feeling was that no matter how well the Albion had played, Spurs couldn’t be that bad again after the break. As a result, Brighton needed a second goal to kill the game off.
The chance to do that arrived minutes into the second half. Bernardo sent in a brilliant cross which found Aaron Connolly completely free six yards out, yet he failed to get his header even on target.
It was a glorious opportunity and one which a more experienced striker would surely make more of. A reminder that Connolly, much like this Brighton side, is still very much a work in progress.
That miss was duly punished as some sloppy defending helped pave the way for Spurs to equalise. If you’re one of those people who loves to pick an Albion scapegoat and then tries to find a way to blame them for everything that goes wrong, then this was an excellent goal to conceded as four or five players were all culpable in some way, including boo boys’ favourites Webster, Gross and Dale Stephens.
Lucas Moura was allowed to dance far too easily away from Gross and Stephens. Webster then won possession but in trying to pass the ball out from the back, only succeeded in playing it straight into Stephens’ shin, which rebounded it into the path of Kane.
The England captain’s initial shot was superbly kept out by Ryan but nobody reacted quick enough to the loose ball which Kane smashed into the bottom corner. No chance of VAR reprieving weak and sloppy defending for that one.
Spurs were then lucky to keep 11 men on the pitch. Harry Winks produced a lunging foul, extremely similar to one which Dan Burn had received a yellow card for in the first half.
On that basis, Winks should have been entering Graham Scott’s book for the second time, but Mr Scott completely bottled the booking on the basis that it would have resulted in him having to show a red.
Would Spurs finishing the game with 10 men have made a difference? Perhaps not as by this point Kane, Moura and Dele Alli were beginning to purr and when three world class players do that, a team like Brighton will always be in trouble.
Alli scored what proved to be the winner with 18 minutes remaining. Christian Eriksen dinked a ball to the back post where Serge Aurier had drifted.
Aurirer laid off to Alli who produced a beautiful finish, lobbing the ball first time on the volley over Ryan and into the far corner.
It was a quality finish from a quality player – not much you can do about that. The good news is that in 48 hours time, Brighton will face a Bournemouth side who don’t possess that sort of quality.
Don’t stress about losing to Spurs, stress if we lose to Bournemouth. A final win in 2019 could be the most important of the lot.
