Brighton go down with their principles intact against rampant Manchester City

As Gabriel Jesus’ shot deflected off teammate Phil Foden to extend Manchester City’s first-half lead to three goals at the Amex Stadium, everyone watching was surely expecting the remaining 60 minutes to prove to be a long evening for Brighton & Hove Albion.

Graham Potter’s side had come into the fixture in as buoyant a mood as you possibly could when coming up against such a fearsome opponent. They sat fourth in the Premier League table at the start of the weekend having already taken points off the likes of Arsenal and Leicester City, but Pep Guardiola’s side are an entirely different proposition.

A harrowing first half-hour had seen City control most facets of the game and pick Brighton off to all but wrap up the win with the half-time whistle still some time away. What will most likely frustrate Potter is that elements of all three goals could be put down to individual errors, something they had kept at a premium during their impressive start to the campaign.

The Citizens, of course, force these errors to a greater degree than almost any other side in the top flight, and their array of attacking talent is capable of exploiting such errors with a frightening level of consistency. However, this was a reminder for the Seagulls that even if they are currently mixing it with the best in the country in terms of league position, there is still a very real gap between themselves and the likes of City.

The first goal, the one that set the tone for the opening 30 minutes of the game, has to be laid at the feet, or rather the hands of the usually dependable Robert Sanchez.

He was arguably fouled by Jesus as he attempted to claim a deflected Foden strike on 13 minutes, but the minimal contact made by the Brazilian striker meant the decision to allow the Ilkay Gundogan goal that came after Bernardo Silva expertly exploited the goalkeeper’s fumble was never likely to be overturned.

Brighton did then find their feet for a short period, remaining committed to their head coach’s principles of trying to build play from the defence, but it was one such move that in fact preceded the visitors’ second goal of the evening.

Marc Cucurella found himself in a promising position on the left-wing but played a misplaced ball into the penalty area which allowed Ruben Dias to intercept. Dias found Rodri, Rodri fed the ball to Silva, Silva waited patiently before sliding a pass into the path of Jack Grealish and the £100 million summer signing from Aston Villa unselfishly squared the ball for Foden to bundle into an empty net.

The move took just 12 seconds from City’s penalty area to the back of the Brighton net.

This was perhaps less an error from Cucurella and more a flash of just how monumental a task it is for sides of Brighton’s standing to overcome an opponent like City, but either way it looked a remarkably easy goal to score.

The third was arguably the most frustrating to concede of the lot as Lewis Dunk played a pass straight to the feet of Silva, starting the attack that ended with Foden deflecting home his second goal of the evening.

“Performance-wise I am so proud of the players.

“We were playing against a top team who deserved to win.

“But our players gave everything, they did everything we asked them to do.

“They were together, they had spirit, they had quality so we are disappointed to lose but our performance was something to be proud of.”

– Graham Potter on Brighton’s defeat to Manchester City on Saturday

The second half represented a marked improvement on the opening 45 minutes. Although it has to come with the caveat that their opponents were three goals to the good, it was a far more positive representation of what Potter has achieved at the start of what is his third season on the south coast as the visitors saw out a 4-1 win.

Tariq Lamptey provided a 30-minute cameo that suggested whilst his serious hamstring injury may have put his career on pause for the best part of a year, it has done little to limit the energy and enthusiasm with which he approaches every venture down Brighton’s right flank.

There was also a flurry of chances with Ederson forced into a number of decent saves before Alexis Mac Allister beat him from the penalty spot after the Brazilian had brought down Enock Mwepu.

The game never truly threatened to become a winnable contest for the home side, but their commitment to their approach did at the very least restore pride and a sense of relief that it is a style of play that can cause problems for the best teams in the country.

There will no doubt be criticism for the defensive display, and fixtures against the likes of City are ones in which a team has to be near-enough perfect as a defensive unit to secure a result. Yet it is not too difficult to see how the openness of Brighton in the first half was an unintended consequence of the more ambitious style of play Potter has tried to implement.

The final scoreline may well have been closer had Brighton put 10 men behind the ball and defended their own penalty area as though their lives depended on it. That would be a crude way to interpret the way the Seagulls played under Potter’s predecessor Chris Hughton during their early years in the Premier League, although it would be fair to say it was a more reactive, backs-to-the-wall defensive approach during his tenure.

In the games in which Hughton’s Brighton faced Manchester City in the Premier League, they lost 2-0, 3-1, 2-0, and 4-1.

Though it was the fixture that turned out to be the former Republic of Ireland international’s final game in charge of the Seagulls in which they suffered a defeat as heavy as the one on Saturday, Brighton barely laid a glove on their esteemed opponents in any of the four meetings between the sides, even though they did briefly threaten to de-rail City winning a league title by taking the lead in Hughton’s last match.

Most frustrating of all was arguably the 2019 FA Cup semi-final, in which Brighton lost 1-0 to a City side that was on its way to a clean sweep of domestic trophies. The Seagulls only mustered two shots on target as they looked to find a way back into the game after Jesus’ fourth-minute goal.

Playing in such a way would have made Brighton’s glorious 3-2 victory over the soon-to-be-crowned champions back in May far more difficult to achieve. Although they were helped by a Joao Cancelo red card that evening, the Seagulls were at their free-flowing best in earning a deserved three points and ensuring their final home game of the campaign ended in style.

A late surge from City on Saturday evening that saw Foden miss a presentable chance to clinch a hat-trick before he set up Riyad Mahrez to complete the scoring was something of a gentle reminder to Brighton just how devastating City can be when required.

It made the scoreline even more one-sided, but it is important to analyse the result within the context of an exceptional start to the season from a Brighton perspective.

They don’t have to play Man City every week. These type of fixtures are not the ones that will determine whether or not they achieve a top-half league finish, but with a trip to Anfield next up in the Premier League, Potter will hope his players have learnt some lessons from what was very nearly a harrowing evening against Pep Guardiola’s title holders, but changing his approach is out of the question.

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