Brighton may be losing games but foundations for success are still there
Three months ago, everyone from Match of the Day pundits to people in the pie queue were saying Brighton & Hove Albion have solid foundations as a club in terms of facilities, setup, management and squad and that we were firmly a top 10 side but for the lack of clinical finishing.
Graham Potter was praised to the rafters in the football press on a weekly basis for his tactical brilliance and ingenuity.
He was subsequently linked with every managerial vacancy going from England to Spurs to Manchester United.
Players like Yves Bissouma and Tariq Lamptey were being talked of in transfer terms like Ben White. The Albion’s youth development strategy was both the envy of better resourced clubs and providing a rich vein of talent for Championship and League One clubs looking for loan stars to help deliver promotion.
Managers of the Big Six said game-in and game-out that we play good football… unless the Albion humiliated them.
With 11 goals scored in December and January, even our inability to find the net seemed to be becoming a thing of the past.
February and March have been a crashing return to Earth. There is no cushioning the impact. So, what has happened? Every Brighton fan seems to have their own theory and that there are so many doing the rounds tells you nobody is quite able to put an exact reason on the past two months.
As great as Dan Burn is, I do not think losing him has changed everything. The fundamentals are all still there and things could turn around just as they did 10 games ago, when we had not won for three months.
We are missing Adam Webster pushing forward, we have got players in a run of less than top form, and yes the understandable frustration from the stands is contagious on the pitch.
It could be confidence. It could be the continuous improvement of other clubs who strengthened in the January window, including Newcastle who spent more than anyone else in Europe.
It could be the rest of the Premier League getting the measure of our squad and tactics. Whatever our run of defeats is down to, it isn’t a change in the fundamentals of the club.
We are the same team now as we were when we were bobbing around the top five back in the autumn. In terms of the table and points, we are still just one win off the top 10, despite everything. That is a position we would have been delighted with in any of our previous seasons in the top flight.
It would only have taken a couple of refereeing decisions, a single connection of boot and ball, a deflection or a lapse by some highly paid and overrated defender to have changed the course of either of our last two games and the confidence of the squad.
None of this is to say there aren’t things that are wrong and need addressing, or players that maybe aren’t in the right place in the right time in their careers.
But those calling for Potter to go and a full-scale reset of the club and the way it operates to be implemented this summer are going too far in my view.
Maybe the players will get their mojo back against Norwich after a two-and-a-half week break to rest, regroup and recover the form and resilience that made us so tough to beat in the first half of the season.
We will still be in the Premier League next season even if three or four points is the best we can manage in the games remaining. Six more points and 12th place would be a significant progression on previous finishes.
I would far rather be where we are than a Fulham or Norwich yo-yoing between Premier League and Championship. I would rather see us testing the best clubs in Europe than watch us draw with Peterborough United.
Next season we go again with an infusion of youth and talent back from loan spells in the lower divisions or European leagues.
There will be fresh, exciting players coming into the squad and wanting to proof themselves in the Premier League,
Union Saint Gilloise will deliver us two or maybe three members of their Champions League qualifying squad, including Deniz Undav. If he adapts to English football as well as Marc Cucurella has, then it could spark a brilliant year.
Undav obviously won’t do it on his own but the squad is strong and will be lifted collectively by a confident goal scorer. There will no doubt be one or two more signings as well.
There are at least eight clubs massively better funded than Brighton, so it is never going to be easy breaking the top 10. It is an uphill battle and the team need us behind them.
Warren Morgan @WarrenBHAFC
