Match Review: Southampton 2-2 Brighton
When Sven-Göran Eriksson was England manager, he used to have this phrase that he used after what seemed like 90% of Three Lions games: “First half good, second half not so good.”
Chris Hughton could’ve channelled his inner Sven after Brighton and Hove Albion’s 2-2 draw away at Southampton. This was “first half absolutely diabolical, second half brilliant.”
The opening 45 minutes were as bad as anything we’ve seen under Hughton. The Albion were wearing their ugly new green away kit for the first time and it was almost as if nobody had thought to tell the players. Dale Stephens was consigning his song to the realms of FAKE NEWS as he consistently passed the ball to Southampton.
Solly March was doing likewise although he at least had the excuse that the Saints were linked with signing him once-upon-a-time. On his first half showing, it’s doubtful anyone in the Championship would offer a cow for him these days.
Glenn Murray was a virtual spectator as the Albion showed absolutely no inclination to go forward at all. The speed with which the visitors moved the ball would’ve made a game of walking football down the King Alfred look quicker than Usain Bolt. Hughton have evidently set his stall out for the draw. Again.
Trouble is, that invited wave after wave of home pressure. Let’s not beat around the bush here – Southampton aren’t great. Yet in that first 45 minutes, we were so negative that they were able to look like potential Premier League champions. Without Shane Duffy throwing himself in front of everything – one goal line clearance in particular was the best block he’s ever produced, with the possible exception of blocking Katie Price’s phone number – the Saints would’ve been out of sight.
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s strike for Southampton was a good one and the least that Mark Hughes’ side deserved. As the half time whistle blew, we wished we’d turned up at St Mary’s 24 hours late for a “Dinner with Ed Miliband” event that the stadium is hosting. That’s how bad things were.
It isn’t hard to imagine what Hughton said at half time. “You can try and attack now fellas, oh and we are wearing green” was probably the gist of it and the results were instant. Davy Propper somehow put a free header off target from a Martin Montoya cross and Anthony Knockaert forced Alex McCarthy into a good save.
It was against the run of play that Southampton doubled the lead. There didn’t seem to be much danger when Gaetan Bong clumsily bundled Danny Ings over in the box and Ings dusted himself down to net the penalty. Ings was a really handful all evening and given that he is only on-loan to Southampton from Liverpool, the Albion could do a lot worse than looking to pay big money for him next summer.
Despite that setback, Brighton kept going and Duffy proved his worth at the other end with a towering header from an Anthony Knockaert free kick. That was followed by the introduction of record signing Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Jurgen Locadia as the Albion went two up front in a bid to take something from the game.
The two substitutes had mixed impacts on the game. Jahanbakhsh was lively and was desperately unlucky not to score his first goal for the club. Locadia meanwhile had a glorious chance when running at the defence with options left, options right and a clear sight of goal, at which point he fell over his own leg. He then failed to connect to a Bong cross when brilliantly placed, leading some to speculate that he could actually be the ghost of Craig Davies come back to haunt us. Still, who cares about that when he will have a new banging tune out on iTunes soon?
Those spurned opportunities looked like they might cost the Albion dear until Anthony Taylor spotted a foul on Shane Duffy in the box and awarded a 91st minute penalty. It wasn’t a great spot kick from Murray as it went straight down the middle but it fooled McCarthy and the striker had his 98th goal for the Albion. One more to level with Kit Napier as the clubs record post-war goalscorer, two more to become only the second player after Tommy Cook to score 100 goals in peacetime football.
On reflection, the draw was probably a fair result. It was certainly the predictable one, with six of our 11 top flight meetings now ending level. But the second half performance leaves plenty of questions about how Hughton sets up away from home. Based on that, we can clearly go away to teams around us in the bottom half of the table and get positive results. This squad is good enough to take the game to sides outside of the top six away from home and head back to the Amex with far more points in the bag than we are currently winning on the road.
Let’s hope Hughton realises that and starts to trust in the team a little more. It’s a very long trip to Newcastle for our next winnable away game for a repeat of that dire first half showing.
