His first spell at the club secured him legendary status, but if Bobby Zamora scores any more goals as crucial as this over the next few months for Brighton, a Premier League campaign next year could be ushered in with the unveiling of a statue of the 34-year-old at Falmer Stadium.
How crucial Zamora’s 89th-minute lob of Marco Silvestri will prove to be in the long run is unclear, but in the immediate term, it opened up a four-point buffer at the top of the Championship after a game Brighton could easily have lost.
That, in essence, is perhaps what makes Brighton such alluring and appealing candidates for promotion, albeit not even one quarter through the season. Leeds were masters of their own downfall in wasting a number of gilt-edged opportunities, but after soaking up plenty of pressure from a side with a millstone around their neck thanks to their home form, Brighton and Zamora picked the pockets of Leeds in ruthless fashion to ensure their unbeaten start to the season remained intact.
The assuredness Chris Hughton has brought to Brighton is admirable, to say the least; he has a track record of promotion with the Championship – as does Zamora – but doing it with Brighton would surely eclipse their respective promotions with Newcastle and West Ham.
“Because of our form we’ve been able to use Bobby in a good way,” Hughton said. “He gives the team and the club a good presence, and you could see that from what he gave to us here.”
Leeds are a club well versed in setting records, and they have now not won at Elland Road for 11 matches, stretching back to March. That eclipses the previous record, set in 1982, and with trips to Fulham and the bottom side Bolton over the next seven days, they now face a big week to avoid being sucked into the early-season relegation mix.
They showed enough endeavour and creativity to provide hope before those games, and had they shown a better touch in front of goal, that lengthy wait for a home win could have conceivably ended here.
“Things tend to go more against you rather than be fortunate, which I felt was the case with Brighton, with all due respect paid to them,” said the Leeds head coach, Uwe Rösler. “They didn’t create a lot but with every little thing they had they punished us.”
As Rösler alluded to, Brighton were clinical from start to finish, epitomised by the 14th-minute strike that gave them the lead, the winger Solly March firing past Silvestri after Leeds had dominated the early exchanges.
To their credit Leeds fought back well, and after Liam Cooper flicked on a free-kick from Alex Mowatt to equalise, they could have gone in ahead at half-time had the striker Chris Wood not missed a simple free header from another deft Mowatt ball.
Rösler pointed that miss out as the second of three key moments in the game, the third coming seven minutes from the end when Leeds were reduced to 10 men after Liam Cooper hobbled off injured.
With Leeds hanging on for dear life, Brighton pressed hard to find a winner, and it came when Zamora chipped Silvestri magnificently to secure a win that seemed so unlikely for long periods of the game.
For those aficionados of a good statistic, that was Zamora’s first goal for the Seagulls in 4,549 days or, in other words, since he left in July 2002. You feel he may not have to wait that long again for another.
