Enjoyable ending at Selhurst Park may be a further sign of a change in fortune for Brighton

Following Christian Benteke’s 95th-minute winning goal in the last instalment of the A23 derby, Graham Potter was quite possibly starting to think that his first win over Crystal Palace as Brighton & Hove Albion head coach might never arrive.

Benteke’s beautifully-taken volley to make the score 2-1 was only the second shot on target for Roy Hodgson’s side. The first had been Jean-Philippe Mateta’s first-half goal to open the scoring. The two strikes against the run go play meant that Potter would end his fourth Premier League meeting with the South London club without a single victory.

Before Monday night’s meeting between the sides at Selhurst Park, the previous four games had seen Brighton record a total of 26 shots on target to Palace’s 10 and, according to Infogol, they have racked up an Expected Goals total of 9.24 in those matches against just 4.17 for their fierce rivals.

It is as though fixtures between Brighton and Palace have encapsulated much of the frustration which has underpinned the relative success that Potter has had in transforming the Seagulls’ playing style over the past two seasons. Brighton control the flow of the game and create the majority of the chances before finding themselves undone by defensive lapses or momentary jolts of brilliance from gifted individuals like Benteke or Wilfried Zaha.

It was therefore quite possible that a trip to South London would not have been seen as an ideal place for the Seagulls to continue their excellent start to the current season on Monday night.

However, with the home side now under the management of Patrick Vieira and adapting to a drastic overhaul of their playing squad over the summer, the latest instalment of one of English football’s more peculiar rivalries bucked the trend of recent meetings between the two sides.

With Yves Bissouma missing due to a knee injury, it was Palace who dominated the middle of the park for much of the evening thanks in no small part to the energy and enthusiasm of Chelsea loanee Conor Gallagher.

Neither side found it particularly easy to fashion goal-scoring opportunities, but the penalty awarded to Palace on the stroke of half-time after Leandro Trossard had clumsily tangled with Gallagher, was a deserved reward for the aggressive approach that Vieira has seemingly attempted to adopt following grumbles about how passive some of the football had become under Hodgson last season.

With Brighton largely restricted to sporadic counter-attacks in the first half and lacking in ideas when trying to break down a disciplined opponent in the second, they certainly did not look like a side that could have moved to the top of the Premier League table for the very first time with a win.

More worryingly, they did not look like themselves.

Far too many passes were played without a sense of direction or purpose. Despite a few typically delicate touches from Trossard, he failed to inspire any real creativity in attack and became increasingly frustrated as it appeared his concession of the penalty would decide the game.

In the end, it was Palace who allowed Brighton to equalise rather than the visiting side forcing their way back to level terms.

Neal Maupay’s goal with what was the last meaningful kick of the game might just be another reason for us to re-define what we thought we previously knew about Graham Potter’s Brighton though.

Having registered a higher xG value than their opponents in 21 games last season and only picking up nine wins, Brighton are now collecting a greater number of points without having to play considerably better than the side they are facing on the day.

Of their games so far, the 2-0 defeat to Everton was a fair reflection of the Seagulls’ weakest performance of the season, the draw at Palace arrived thanks to a late goal that had shown few signs of arriving before the final minute of injury-time, and of their four victories, only the home win against Watford was particularly comfortable or could be considered a one-sided affair.

We are still only six games into the season. Reading too much into these statistical trends may be a touch premature and it may be a struggle for Brighton to continue to collect points in such a manner, but the resilience shown to hang on in a game where very little seemed to be going right for them and eventually steal a late point cannot be denied.

“It (Selhurst Park) is a difficult place to come and to play. We are happy with the point.

“Once it is over, no one cares how you played once it is over. It is all about results.

“It gives us a good foundation. We know we can do better and improve but at the same time, we have to credit the players, they keep going, and their resilience is really good.”

– Graham Potter after Brighton’s 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace

Although the downright chaos that followed Maupay’s late equaliser, somewhat ironically scored in the same minute of the game that Benteke secured the three points for Palace at the Amex in February, will quite understandably create something of a haziness in regards to analysing the 90 minutes,  it would not be exaggerating to suggest that the Seagulls had been lucky to make the journey home with a point.

The equalising goal had its own element of fortune in that the previously-imperious Marc Guehi inexplicably decided not to head clear Joel Veltman’s long ball forward. Fortune could also be thanked for the ball sitting up near-0n perfect for Maupay to lob his effort over Vicente Guaita and into the net. Yet the most obvious example of Brighton’s luck came 12 minutes earlier.

Brighton have become accustomed to seeing inviting opportunities to score go to waste during Potter’s two seasons as head coach, although it has almost exclusively been Seagulls strikers that have been the culprits. On Monday night, it was Crystal Palace’s Jordan Ayew who had a moment to forget.

After the effervescent Gallagher beat Marc Cucurella to a loose ball in midfield, Benteke slid a pass into the path of the Ghanian forward, leaving him with only Robert Sanchez to beat from a fairly inviting shooting angle. However, instead of slotting the ball into a gap at the near post, he rolled his effort wide of the target and effectively passed up an opportunity to decide the game in his team’s favour.

Seagulls’ supporters have every right to feel that some of the luck their team is having is a justified reward for some ludicrous misfortune last season, and with Brighton still sat in the European qualification places at the end of September, and for once experiencing the phenomenon of a thoroughly undeserved positive result in their most heated encounter of the season, there should be little concern about when their luck might run out.

Although Brighton’s current success should probably be seen as a deserved outcome of the work of Potter and his adaptable group of players, Seagulls fans were no doubt glad their team had, for once, been lucky rather than good in a game against Palace.

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