Brighton’s reputation for entertaining football will mean nothing if they go down
At the midpoint of the season it seemed Brighton had started to cut the bottom three adrift. It began to look like there might be no relegation drama this year but, in the early months of 2021, Fulham have put together a few results, while the goals have dried up at the Amex.
Still fancied to beat the drop because of their maverick build-up play and because, let’s face it, there are at least four or five teams worse, Brighton sit a distant 8/1 in the Premier League betting markets to go down.
Newcastle and Burnley are both pegged by bookies as more likely candidates to drop into the Championship, in addition to upstart Fulham and usual suspects West Brom and Sheffield United, whose players have the body language of a pub team.
But no one in the Brighton hierarchy is sitting comfortably, and results like those against West Brom and Crystal Palace prove that the Seagulls have an unpleasant knack for playing teams off the pitch like the early 2000s Galacticos and then losing anyway.
The Seagulls have carved out their place in the top division the last few years and Tony Bloom has to take a lot of credit for taking this club to a new level.
Not all teams, and especially not in the Premier League, can boast having a true fan in charge, someone who really cares about the club and its success. Looking at you, Newcastle.
But if they want to continue eating at the adult’s table, Graham Potter’s side are going to need to start turning performances into results.
The boss on yesterday.
@AmexUK#BHAFC pic.twitter.com/SwliLKcykz
— Brighton & Hove Albion (@OfficialBHAFC) February 28, 2021
If Brighton recover from their mid-season dip in form and ultimately survive, they’ll need to invest wisely, and we don’t all have to be football scouts to figure out which area needs the most attention (When I close my eyes I still see Danny Welbeck hitting the post from the penalty spot in the West Brom debacle).
Assuming Percy Tau isn’t magically going to play his way into Potter’s side on the training ground and become the second coming of Glenn Murray that South African Twitter seems to think he is, Brighton need strikers to stay in the top division as long-term tenants. They need goalscorers.
Aston Villa kicked on this season after avoiding relegation last campaign by the narrowest of margins – and a helping hand from goal-line technology taking a day off.
The signing of Ollie Watkins, who hit 26 goals from open play in the Championship, coupled with Arsenal keeper Emi Martinez and a refusal to entertain offers for Jack Grealish, saw the Midlands club go from relegation fodder to hunting
European football. Maybe that’s a conversation for another day, but it’s a conversation that Brighton’s football this season – if not their points total – has merited.
First, however, they will need to put space between them and the teams around them, or they stand at risk of being one of the best Premier League teams in history to suffer the drop.
