Jeremy Sarmiento and Julio Enciso: Brighton Plan B

One of the biggest criticisms levelled at the Albion in three seasons under Graham Potter has been the lack of Plan B. It is the reason why Brighton fans are getting rather excited over what Julio Enciso and Jeremy Sarmiento have brought to the party in pre-season so far.

When Potterball works, it can be glorious. We saw that at the end of the 2021-22 season when the Albion deservedly beat Arsenal, Spurs, Wolves, Manchester United and West Ham.

Five sides eyeing up Champions League, Europa League and Europa Conference qualification could not live with Potter’s Seagulls.

The problem is when Potterball doesn’t work, Our Graham is rarely able to change things. Sometimes that is down to the very strange substitutions he specialises in.

See Norwich City at home, when top scorer Neal Maupay was withdrawn in favour of midfielder Enock Mwepu with Brighton trying to find a way through the Premier League’s bottom club.

Potter could quite rightly point to a lack of different options in his squad. It is difficult to adopt a different approach when virtually every player in your squad is a player whose best attribute is passing the ball rather than running at opponents at pace.

The Albion find it particularly hard to make their passing football count against the lesser teams in the top flight, who sit deep and challenge the Albion to break them down.

In games like those, Brighton set Guinness World Records for number of sideways passes and put 80 percent possession on the board. They don’t make an impact where it counts – the score.

You probably don’t need reminding about the Albion’s woeful home record up until the merry month of May. Three wins all season, 12 goals scored in 17 matches. There was that run of 96 days without a goal at the Amex.

Norwich, Aston Villa, Burnley, Wolves, The Leeds United and Everton all left with clean sheets. Newcastle, Southampton and Crystal Palace went away with a share of the spoils.

A lot of those games were characterised by the Albion failing to break through stubborn defences in teams set up by managers who knew Brighton’s biggest weakness. When Plan A of pass, pass, pass did not work, there was no Plan B.

The crazy thing is that all sounds doom and gloom and yet Brighton still managed to finish in a record-breaking ninth place in the Premier League.

If Potter can maintain the away form that was the fifth best in the top flight last season and improve that home record which was the fifth worst, then you don’t need a maths degree to see what will happen. 10am pints on a Thursday morning in Greece before playing Panathinaikos.

Crucial to achieving that is breaking teams down who set out to defend at the Amex. And based on the admittedly limited evidence of a glorified training match against Union SG and a friendly against the ninth best team in Portugal, that is where Sarmiento and Enciso come in.

Both have demonstrated a skillset unlike much of the rest of this Brighton squad. They do strange things like carry the ball, frightening full backs with pace, trickery and directness.

Sarmiento showed glimpses of it in his limited Premier League game time last season between bouts of injuries. Watch clips of Enciso in action for former club Libertad and you see a livewire forward with no fear who always wants to make things happen.

Enciso displayed that in the 4-1 win over Estoril when claiming an assist for Kaoru Mitoma to score the Albion’s third.

Deniz Undav fed a pass down the right flank. Enciso latched onto it, ran at Estoril left back Tiago Araujo and left him completely flummoxed via a flurry of stepovers. The teenager then pulled a low ball back to Mitoma who applied the finish.

There is obviously a huge difference between Enciso doing that against a 21-year-old loan player from Benfica with less than 30 career games to his name and tormenting an Andrew Robertson, a Ben Chilwell or a Sergio Reguilon.

And there remains the prospect that Enciso might yet depart on loan, as one senior Albion official eluded to in comments at a recent fan forum not meant to have gone public.

There will also be doubts about whether 18-year-old Enciso can handle the physicality and the change of culture coming from South America to England.

It took Alexis Mac Allister two years to establish himself as a Premier League regular after arriving from Argentina. Moises Caicedo waited 18 months for his Premier League debut.

The patient approach has been so beneficial for those two young Latinos that Brighton will be sorely attempted to use it again for Enciso.

It is also worth remembering that Enciso is a year younger than Caicedo and four years younger than Mac Allister when they rocked up in Sussex by the Sea.

Sarmiento is a little more advanced in his development. He is deceptively big and strong for a technically good 20-year-old forward.

Potter must think him close enough to being ready to have given him a full debut at West Ham cruelly cut short by injury, followed by a couple of sporadic appearances from the bench after he recovered from four months out.

To christen Sarmiento the new messiah or start a campaign for him to wear the number seven shirt based on a total of 45 minutes of Premier League football would however be a risky move.

Too many young Brighton players have been hyped to high heaven after achieving very little at first team level, subsequently ending up never fulfilling expectations. See Aaron Connolly, Jake Robinson, Joe Gatting…

It is prudent to have realistic expectations. Sarmiento and Enciso would need to be very special players to start every week for Brighton at this stage in their careers, but that doesn’t mean Albion fans should not be excited about what they can offer the squad as a long-awaited Plan B.

Imagine for a second it is February 4th 2023 and Plucky Little Bournemouth have parked the bus at the Amex.

Brighton can find no way through. But unlike all those dour Brighton nil games of the past three seasons, Potter brings on Sarmiento and Enciso as Plan B.

Suddenly, an opponent who have set out to defend against a passing side is faced with a new threat. Sarmiento and Enciso run wild, Bournemouth cannot cope and the Albion end up scoring a couple of goals in the final 20 minutes to win the 96 Miles Apart South Coast Derby.

Having a Plan B to change the dynamic of home games and pick up points which went begging last season could push the Albion towards Europe.

Brighton seem unlikely to sign that silver bullet striker costing £40 million who most fans seek to think is what is needed to move even higher up the league.

The second most important change they could make this summer is to diversify the squad with players capable of giving Potter more options and a different way of playing.

This of course relies on Potter not coaching their directness and instinct to run at opponents with the ball out of them, as happened with Leandro Trossard.

The Vampire of Genk arrived as a a tricky winger with the magic to make things up. His Amex debut against West Ham was one of the most exciting first appearances of a Brighton player in recent years, only for Potter to deploy him as a number 10 and turn him into a sideways passing monster.

After three years as Albion manager, Potter must now know he needs a different threat. Sarmiento and Enciso can be that Plan B for Brighton.