Match Review: Everton 3-1 Brighton
This sort of result was always going to come at some point. While Brighton and Hove Albion may have won their last three games in a row without conceding a goal, that hasn’t told the complete story about the Seagulls’ recent form.
Really, we were lucky to escape from both the Newcastle United and Wolverhampton Wanderers games with victory. The Toon Army mustered 27 shots at St James’ Park without scoring, mainly because they don’t possess a Premier League-standard striker.
Wolves meanwhile had 25 efforts at the Amex and they weren’t on the scoresheet purely because of the brilliance of Maty Ryan, who had three outrageous second half saves to preserve a clean sheet.
It’s asking a lot for Ryan to be that outstanding every week and for Lewis Dunk and Shane Duffy to head away and block everything that comes in their direction. Against a side with more quality than Newcastle or Wolves, we were always likely to be punished and so it proved against Everton.
In Richarlison, the Toffees had the best player on the pitch by some distance. Many eyebrows were raised when Marco Silva paid £50m to Watofrd for a forward who hadn’t scored a goal since November but he was superb at Goodison Park, scoring Everton’s first and third goals in what was a comfortable afternoon for the hosts.
The tone was set virtually from kick off as Gylfi Sigurdsson missed two good chances inside of the first 15 minutes with Everton taking the lead of 26. The Albion’s difficulties in defending set pieces last season were well documented but this was a new one as it was actually from our own corner that the Toffees took the lead.
Alireza Jahanbakhsh’s delivery wasn’t a great one with the ball flying harmlessly to the back post. Everton cleared and within 20 seconds had broken quicker than John Prescott to an all-you-can-buffet with Richarlison finishing past Ryan for 1-0.
It was another largely frustrating afternoon for Jahanbakhsh. He has now started the past four games and while he doesn’t ever do anything badly, he doesn’t really do much right either. He just doesn’t seem to offer much at all, especially not for the club-record £17m paid, other than bringing in the likes and comments of millions of Iranians to the club’s Instagram feed.
Maybe he needs more time to settle in but at the moment he doesn’t offer anymore than Anthony Knockaert, whose place he has taken. There was one moment in the second half when Glenn Murray went apoplectic with rage at Jahanbakhsh which pretty much summed things up and it was a real surprise when Chris Hughton decided to haul Jose Izquierdo rather than the Iranian.
Having said all that, Jahanbakhsh did play a part in the Albion’s equaliser. He started off the well-worked short corner routine that saw the ball passed to March whose cross was then headed in by Lewis Dunk. 1-1 at the break and the game looked nicely balanced.
Brighton blew it though in the second half. The Albion weren’t able to string more than a couple of passes together and within five minutes of the restart Everton went back into the lead. They’d hit the post through Idrissa Gueye inside of 120 seconds and there was nothing the upright nor Ryan could do to keep out Seamus Coleman’s effort.
Richarlison put the game beyond doubt with 15 minutes remaining after a terrible effort from Dunk. His loose square pass went straight to the feet of the Brazilian who then went around both Duffy and Ryan to put the result beyond doubt.
It was a real egg-on-face moment for Dunk and couldn’t have come at a worse time given that England manager Gareth Southgate was in the stands. Southgate’s presence seems to bring out the worst in Dunk – the first time he came to check out the defender was away at Huddersfield Town last season when the Albion were woeful in going down to a 2-0 defeat at the John Smiths Stadium. Perhaps it would be best if Southgate stayed away from now on.
Jordan Pickford was finally forced into a meaningful save right at the death when he tipped over a Jahanbakhsh effort and we finally got to see £5m signing from Deportivo La Coruna Florin Andone, who was given the final 10 minutes. It was an interesting cameo from the Romanian striker who looked a real handful in his brief time on the pitch, certainly more so than Jurgen Locadia. With Andone fit, perhaps Hughton will consider playing him and Murray in tandem at home as March again looked a little lost in the number 10 role.
The result brings to an end the Albion’s three game winning run, proving just how hard it is for any side outside of the top six to put together a string of victories in this division. Everton are a quality outfit that look best placed of anyone to break into the European places and given that we’ve never won at Goodison Park before, the result probably shouldn’t come as surprise.
There will be much more important away games to win after all, starting next week away at struggling Cardiff City.
