Jonathan Wilson’s match report has landed, which is my cue to get some fresh air. Thanks for your company, correspondence and views on Dr No.
“Like a lot of people,” says Kári Tulinius, “I just assumed City would reassert themselves and run away with the league. More than the Spurs game, this performance has me thinking that they won’t. There’s no structure to their play, which is startling for a Pep team.”
“Editing schedule,” says Jason Graff. “Everyone might have to put a hold on those ‘City Have Recaptured the Magic’ think pieces for another week anyway.”
Hmmm. Even if they’d wrapped up the routine win they were heading for after an hour, I’m not sure it would have prompted much comment. The big story today would still have been whatever is about to happen at Anfield. This version of City are only the third or fourth-best team in England, aren’t they?
“Glad to hear,” says Colum Fordham, “Dr No (aka Hürzeler) has denied Pep (formerly Goldfinger – he’s lost the Midas touch) with his courageous substitutions. Even more delighted that the consummate professional James Milner scored a penalty in such a crucial match.”
The name’s Milner, James Milner.
“Loving the MBM,” says Joe Scott, tactfully. “Just a point of pedantry. Milner’s debut was 10 November 2002, and Trafford’s birth was 10 October, making him exactly one month old – still a mental stat.”
That’s not pedantry in my book: it’s a very welcome fact-check.
“Is James Milner,” asks Andrew Goudie, “now both the second-youngest and second-oldest player to score in the Premier League?”
Good question! Opta have already added him to this list as the second-oldest scorer, behind only Teddy Sheringham, the only 40-something to have scored. And yes, Milner is still the second-youngest too, just behind James Vaughan of Everton… though Max Dowman of Arsenal may have something to say about that soon.
“City have lost The Aura,” says Andrew Chisholm. “In truth, they could have been got at more by other teams towards the end of the 23-24 season, when the slight (but decisive) deterioration in quality was already beginning. But they still had The Aura, and opponents were cowed by it. Now it’s gone, though, and other teams are not afraid of them anymore, even though they’re still objectively a very good team even with all the changes in playing staff.”
Yes. The aura was lost somewhere on the beach at Bournemouth, and it has now twice refused to be washed ashore at Brighton.
City’s best player in the first half was Erling Haaland, who produced five shots and a goal. Their best player in the second half was James Trafford, their young goalie, whose rubber-limbed saves may yet keep Ederson on the bench.
“Trafford wasn’t even born when James Milner made his PL debut for Leeds,” says Kit Harrison. “The years keep on trucking. Cheers, Kit (42), Stalybridge.” Ha.
So City lose for the second time in a row. They’re even below Man United!
City are now 12th, with three points from three games. United, with four points, are lording it in eighth. And Brighton are 10th, back in a familiar seat.
Meanwhile West Ham have added a third goal at the City Ground. They leap to 15th, with three points, while Forest are ninth with four.
FULL TIME! Brighton 2-1 Man City
They’ve done it again! And the man of the match is Fabian Hürzeler, whose fearless quadruple substitution was the game-changer.
90+8 min Half-chance for City! Reijnders again, shooting from distance, and missing.
90+6 min Chance for City! Haaland has a rare touch in this half – a shot that goes so astray that it ends up as a cross. Then Rodri shows how it’s done with a lovely chip to Reijnders, whose header is well blocked by Van Hecke.
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90+4 min Time for Dr No to make his final move. Hürzeler takes off the tireless Minteh and hands a debut to Diego Coppola – a defender replacing a winger. Hope he doesn’t live to regret that.
90+1 min Since the quadruple substitution, Brighton have had 11 shots to City’s two. And now they’ve come back from 1-o down to 2-1 up, just as they did on City’s last visit.
90 min City have seven minutes to rescue this. That was Brajan Gruda’s first goal at the Amex, and it may be on his highlights reel forever.
GOAL! Brighton 2-1 Man City (Gruda
Brighton counter and score! Lovely composed finish from Gruda, who passes the ball into an open goal.
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88 min Save! Trafford does phenomenally to paw away a looping ball. But then …
84 min Half-chance for Brighton! They advance in numbers, Mitoma slips the ball out to Gruda, whose left-foot shot is too tentative.
84 min More subs from Pep: Lewis for Nunes at right-back, and Dias for Khusanov in the centre of defence.
West Ham have done it again! They lead 2-0, with a penalty from Paqueta. Graham Potter won’t be getting sacked in the morning, or the rest of the international break.
83 min The art of substitutions lies partly in who you leave on. Hürzeler kept faith with his wingers and now Minteh finds Mitoma in space in the inside-left channel. It’s a loose pass but Mitoma improvises beautifully and almost sends a tasty flick into the path of De Cuyper. With his changes, and his non-changes, Hürzeler has done wonders for Brighton’s confidence.
81 min City threaten again, only for Bobb to lob the ball over everyone.
In the other game, West Ham have scored! Jarrod Bowen has put them 1-0 up at Forest.
77 min City are beginning to reassert themselves. Veltman gets a yellow for a late challenge on Doku. City have a corner and Haaland gets his head to it but can’t keep the ball down.
74 min Gruda, who did well to set up Minteh just now, dances into the box and goes down. The defender dealing with him is Khusanov, who has to be careful, but there’s no second penalty.
72 min How will Pep react to this turning of the tide? By sending on two subs – Doku and O’Reilly for Silva and Marmoush, who was so good that you wonder if he is injured.
72 min Lovely from Minteh! A jink, a wiggle and a shot that goes just wide.
70 min City are rattled. Just before the pen, there was a yellow card for Khusanov, and now there’s another for Ait-Nouri.
68 min That was Milner’s first goal for Brighton, and it may have electrified the whole of the south coast. The Amex, which was half-asleep five minutes ago, is rocking.
GOAL! Brighton 1-1 Man City (Milner 67)
Milner plants it in the corner, of course he does, after sending Trafford the wrong way. What chance did a man of 22 have against a guy of 39?
It’s going to be James Milner. He last scored a PL pen in 2019!
The VAR is Paul Tierney … and he’s not going to overturn it.
Penalty! To Brighton
For handball, by Matheus Nunes, whose arm was up. “A much more obvious one,” Alan Smith reckons, than the contentious ones we’ve been seeing.
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61 min Those subs in full: Milner for Baleba, Ayari for Hinshelwood, Rutter for Welbeck, Gruda for Gomez. So, of the front six, only the two flying wingers are still there – Minteh and Mitoma.
61 min Chance! The subs do the trick and Minteh, who looked lost in the first half, draws a fine save from Trafford.
61 min SUBS! Four of them, all for Brighton. It may take me the rest of the game to type them out, but among them is James Milner, ten years after he left City.
60 min As the hour glass flips over, City nearly get a goal that doesn’t involve Haaland! Marmoush, on the left, plays a lovely early cross with the outside of his right boot. Bobb, sliding in, is a second too late to get his shot on target.
56 min Bobb pops up in the box and goes on a giddy slalom, twisting between two players without getting a shot away. Off the ball, Haaland gives his marker a shove in the head.
“Watching the City game,” says Steve, “and they deserve the lead. But the fact they can fall over as a tactical choice, nowhere near the ball when Brighton are in possession so the ref stops the game, then City get the drop ball that they use to attack not just once but twice makes me hate football a bit. The ruthlessness of champions I suppose but feels wrong.” Or ex-champions.
55 min Even better from Brighton as Welbeck sends a fine through ball down the middle for Gomez. But again they spoil it as Gomez, losing a foot race with Khusanov, brings him down.
52 min Better from Brighton as Mitoma bursts into the box and back-heels to De Cuyper, who is fouled by Bernardo Silva. But Brighton can’t turn a free kick into a chance.
“Brighton regressing,” said William Morgan, before that. “They seem to be getting worse under FH. A world away from the football under RDZ. They look slow, uninspired and sloppy. One goal in 2.5 games and that a penalty.” Sounds as if you don’t think the League Cup counts.
50 min Brighton are still being untidy in a way that’s not like them. Hinshelwood plays a pass straight out of play.
48 min Half-chance! Marmoush, slipped through by Bobb, can’t quite deliver from a narrow angle.
47 min The five most accurate passers in the first half were all wearing black. You may already have guessed who was top of that table: Rodri, with 89 per cent (57 passes completed out of 64).
46 min Brighton kick off and do something they didn’t often do in the first half: they string ten passes together.
More from Eric Peterson. “The chatter around James Trafford moving ahead of Ederson in the Man City pecking order,” he argues, “calls to mind David Raya’s introduction to Arsenal as Aaron Ramsdale’s successor two years ago. Controversial at the time, premature in the eyes of many, and some growing pains to be sure, but it was always intended to be the long-range choice and it proved to be the right move. When it comes to the long term, better to make that kind of move a year too soon than a year too late.”
Interesting view! To my untrained eye, there’s one big difference. Raya was already a better keeper than Ramsdale then, whereas Trafford still has some way to go to catch up with Ederson. Opposing strikers would not be disappointed to see Trafford’s name on the team sheet.
Erling Haaland has played one pass, taken five shots, and scored one goal.
Brighton had only one shot in that half, the strike by Mitoma that brought a fine save from Trafford. That, according to Sky, is the fewest shots Brighton have had in a first half at home for ten years.
HALF-TIME! Brighton 0-1 Man City
So City hold onto their lead, and they deserve it. Since Haaland clicked into gear, after about 25 minutes, they have been much the better team. Brighton have found a few openings, but they will need to be far more precise in the final third.
45+3 min Brighton could be level! Minteh races away down the right, skips past Ait-Nouri’s high boot and gets his cross in, but it’s behind the onrushing Welbeck. Minteh then goes down with a head injury, which happily seems to be nothing serious.
News from elsewhere: VAR change at Anfield
A story from my colleague Andy Martin …
“Michael Salisbury has been stood down as VAR official for today’s Premier League clash between Liverpool and Arsenal.
“John Brooks will instead be in charge at Stockley Park after Salisbury’s controversial involvement in an incident during Saturday’s game between Chelsea and Fulham at Stamford Bridge.
“He intervened to ask match referee Rob Jones to go to the pitchside monitor after Fulham midfielder Josh King had scored 21 minutes into the game, and ultimately the goal was chalked off when team-mate Rodrigo Muniz was adjudged to have stepped on Trevoh Chalobah during the build-up despite minimal contact.
“It is understood the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) has acknowledged that the decision was an error and the incident did not meet the high bar for intervention as a clear and obvious error, and that referees’ boss Howard Webb has been in touch with Fulham.”
45 min There will be three more minutes. The delay early on, for Gomez’s injury, was about that long.
43 min Near-calamity! Verbruggen, receiving a poor back pass, is inches away from being hunted down by Haaland. He just gets the ball away in time, but only to another black shirt. Ait-Nouri ends up on the byline, whipping in a fine low cross that doesn’t quite find a team-mate.
40 min As things stand, City are fifth, level with Liverpool on points (six) and goal difference (+3), but behind them on goals scored (five against seven). And poor old Brighton are still 18th.
38 min City threaten again as Minteh loses the ball in their half. Marmoush almost gets away but he stays in the middle, where Brighton have about five players, when the ball surely needed to go wide.
37 min This is Haaland’s 100th Premier League game, and that’s his 88th goal – a record. Against Brighton, he has six in six.
The goal was assisted by Marmoush but created by Bobb – and an error or two. Bobb, at inside-right, found Marmoush, at inside-left. He seemed to lose the ball, the defenders had a chance to poke it away, but they fluffed it, allowing Marmoush to have another go and play the shortest of through balls. Haaland raced onto it and passed into the corner.
GOAL! Brighton 0-1 Man City (Haaland 33)
He’s found those shooting boots!
Updated
31 min Right on cue, Brighton have a glimmer in the City box. A cross from the left finds Minteh in acres near the penalty spot, and he’s so surprised that he’s not sure what to do about it. Instead of taking a shot, he plays a dinky pass to nobody.
30 min There’s a pause as Rodri gets a blow to the head, which doesn’t look too serious. This game has begun to go as you might have expected: City having two-thirds of the ball and most of the attempts on goal (5/6), but Brighton threatening on the break.
28 min City win their first corner. It’s a good one, swung in by Reijnders, and well headed away by Van Hecke.
26 min Save! Verbruggen from Haaland, whose first header of the day is a lot sharper than his two shots so far. Ait-Nouri sends him a gorgeous backspun cross and Haaland meets it well, but Verbruggen stands tall.
An urgent question has come in about Hürzeler. “Why,” asks Rob, “is he dressed like Dr No??”
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25 min Half-chance for Haaland! Left foot, again, and this time he screws the ball wide. Has he left his shooting boots at home?
22 min Another fine break from Brighton, launched by a neat interception from De Cuyper at left-back. A few neat passes and Welbeck is spraying the ball to the right wing, where Minteh picks a less neat option, asking too much of the overlapping Veltman.
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20 min Trafford celebrates his save by sending a long ball to Marmoush, who can’t quite latch onto it.
19 min Save! Brighton stage a lovely counter as Welbeck pokes the ball through to Mitoma. He shakes off a defender and hits a decent shot, which Trafford does well to push round the post.
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17 min The ball reaches Trafford in the sweeper-keeper zone. He thinks about going long again, then changes his mind and passes to Rodri, who is hovering like a helicopter parent.
15 min The first yellow card goes to Jan Paul van Hecke, who first gives Haaland a shove, then, as if instantly fired up, hurls himself into a crowd of players.
14 min Both teams have been sloppy, by their high standards of stewardship. And only Haaland has had a sniff of a chance.
13 min Another ambitious ball from Mitima, another stretch too far for Minteh. This one was a cross, struck with the outside of the right boot, but overhit.
11 min The first sign of a wobble at the back for City. Brighton press them, as you would after last weekend, and Trafford ends up resorting to a long ball, which he slices.
9 min Chance! Missed by Erling Haaland, who goes clean through, gets a left-foot shot away – and sends it dribbling towards Verbruggen.
8 min Brighton steal the ball in midfield and Mitoma hits an ambitious through ball for Minteh, who is quick but not quick enough to keep it in.
7 min Gomez is up and walking.
3 min The first embarrassment involved in playing out from the back comes from Lewis Dunk, who passes straight into touch. Brighton soon win the ball back through Welbeck, who tries to send Gomez away, only for a crunching tackle to come in from Reijnders. As Gomez stays down, Fabian Hürzeler tries to persuade the fourth official that the clash should be reviewed for reckless play. He doesn’t succeed.
2 min City get busy down their left flank with Ait-Nouri and Marmoush playing tiki-taka. Then they make their way over to the right where Bobb and Nunes follow suit.
1 min City kick off and go back to Trafford, who jinks past thre onrushing Gomez … but then hoofs the ball to Bart Verbruggen.
Fun fact! Danny Welbeck is facing Man City for the 22nd time today and looking for his first goal. Maybe he just needs to pretend they’re Man United.
Back at the Amex, the teams stroll out onto the field. Brighton is bright and sunny.
The first big game of the day has finished … goalless. Here’s Daniel Harris.
The first email of the day comes from Eric Peterson, who is more interested in the other 2pm game. “The fixture schedule for today works out nicely,” he reckons. “The most compelling thing about the other game being played at this time has nothing to do with what happens during it. The prospect for postgame chaos around whichever team loses Nottingham Forest v West Ham is more compelling, be it Evangelos Marinakis venting at Nuno Espirito Santo venting at Edu, or West Ham’s travelling support venting at their team. We can watch this one, enjoy it, and then switch streams for real entertainment.”
Rodri 'maybe not for 90'
Pep Guardiola has been talking to Sky. The first question, naturally, is about Rodri. “He’s vital,” Pep murmurs, “everybody knows that… He played some minutes against Spurs [about 20, including added time], so maybe not for 90 [today].”
The second question is about goalies. Asked if he now has two No 1s, Pep says it’s more a case of giving Trafford the first part of the season, up to the international break that starts tonight. “And then we’ll see.” Sounds as if Ederson will be back for the Manchester derby in a fortnight’s time.
Teams in full
Brighton (probable 4-2-3-1) Verbruggen; Veltman, Van Hecke, Dunk, De Cuyper; Baleba, Hinshelwood; Minteh, Gomez, Mitoma; Welbeck.
Subs: Steele, Coppola, Boscagli, Kadioglu, Gruda, Milner, Ayari, O’Riley, Rutter.
Manchester City (possible 4-1-4-1) Trafford; Nunes, Stones, Khusanov, Ait-Nouri; Rodri; Silva, Bobb, Reijnders, Marmoush; Haaland.
Subs: Ederson, Lewis, Akanji, Dias, Ake, Gonzalez, Gundogan, O’Reilly, Doku.
Referee Darren England. VAR Paul Tierney.
Teams in brief: Rodri starts, Trafford retained
Rodri, who came on as a sub last weekend, makes his first start for nearly a year. That will be music to the ears of City fans, or anyone who admires a bit of midfield mastery.
Pep Guardiola makes three more changes from the XI beaten by Spurs, bringing in Matheus Nunes and Abdukodir Khusanov at the back, plus the captain, Bernardo Silva, in midfield. Rico Lewis and Ruben Dias drop to the bench, while Rayan Cherki is injured. In goal, the story is there isn’t a change: James Trafford retains Pep’s faith after his jitters against Spurs, so Ederson has to bide his time on the bench.
For Brighton, Fabian Hürzeler makes three changes from the XI that lost to Everton. Joel Veltman replaces Mats Wieffer at right-back, and there are two changes in midfield, with Jack Hinshelwood and Diego Gomez coming in for Yasin Ayari and Matt O’Riley.
Preamble
Afternoon everyone and welcome to what should be an intriguing battle. Two visionary managers, two elegant styles of play, two teams in transition … and only one good result apiece this season.
Man City walloped Wolves, only to lose at home to Spurs. Brighton let two points slip late on at home to Fulham, then lost at Everton’s shiny new stadium, and needed a visit to Oxford in the League Cup to find some form (and six goals). This is technically a bottom-half-of-the-table clash, with City 11th and Brighton 18th – but either can take the escalator to their usual level today. A win by two goals will put City in the top four, if only for a couple of hours, while a win of any kind will lift Brighton to 10th.
Pep Guardiola used to like to be beside the seaside, but last November he went to Bournemouth and Brighton on successive Saturdays and left City’s aura on the beach. After going 2-1 down at the Vitality Stadium, they led at the Amex for nearly an hour before Joao Pedro and Matt O’Riley put them into their misery.
City’s galling season had a strange quirk to it. They were invincible in British Summer Time (P18 W14 D4), but mediocre from November to March (P20 W7 D4 L9). This year it’s still Summer Time and already the living is uneasy. After seeing Thomas Frank expose City’s inexperience last weekend, Fabian Hürzeler will surely fancy this. He has yet to lose to Pep: the game at the Etihad, just before the clocks went forward, finished 2-2.
Kick-off is at 2pm (BST, obviously) and I’ll be back soon with the teams.
