Brighton & Hove Albion recorded their biggest win of the season on Saturday with their 5-0 thrashing of Norwich City. For Alex Neil, the result was the worst of his managerial career. Both teams ended the day in the same position they began it, Brighton second in the Championship and Norwich fourth, but it is tempting to think the match will prove significant for both teams as the season goes on.
For Brighton the result was vindication. The Seagulls missed automatic promotion on the final day of last season before losing against Sheffield Wednesday in the play-off semi-finals. But instead of licking their wounds, Chris Hughton’s side have simply continued where they left off, building from a sound defensive base to keep eking out the wins.
With Shane Duffy brought in from Blackburn to form a towering defensive partnership with Lewis Dunk, Brighton have kept seven clean sheets in their last nine league games. At the other end of the pitch the return of Glenn Murray, on loan from Bournemouth, has given Brighton a real cutting edge. This is especially true at home where Murray has scored all nine of his goals this season. Resilient and calm, Brighton embody the virtues of their manager. Speaking after the match there was not a jot of hubris from Hughton, despite such an impressive statement being made against his former club. He described the result as a big win but followed it with the word “unusual”. The message was that his team needed to put this result behind them as soon as possible. Next weekend they are at Bristol City.
“One thing I know about this division is that you cannot dwell or get carried away, you cannot,” Hughton said. “There are so many teams that can beat you. If you want to be at a high level your focus has to continue to be high. This is a big, big win and we should enjoy it, but come Monday morning all our thoughts and efforts will be on next week.”
Neil’s post-match test was more difficult. He had to show the result hurt without suggesting the wheels might be coming off his Norwich side, who have lost four of their last seven matches. The result, he admitted, was the “worst of my career”, but he claimed the match had been even until Murray scored his and Brighton’s second in the 60th minute.
“The game up until the second goal was like any other tight game at the top of the Championship,” Neil said. “A week and a half ago we were top of the league and everyone was talking about how we were one of the favourites to win the Championship. Now there’s been a few bad results and a humiliating result today and things change. There’s not much I can do apart from get back into work and try to get things right.”
The Scot is a forthright speaker and had given the local Brighton media pre-match ammunition when he described Albion as “old-fashioned” and “quite direct”. In truth, the remarks were part of a positive assessment of his opponents but it is tempting to see such an accidental indiscretion as an example of the 35-year-old’s inexperience.
Naivety was apparent in his side, too. It might be an odd quality to ascribe to a team that contained six current internationals, but the dominant characteristic of Norwich’s performance was the frequency with which they made elementary unforced errors. The opening goal came about after the goalkeeper, Michael McGovern, took a terrible touch instead of simply clearing his lines. Murray closed him down, barged him off the ball and finished coolly. The fourth goal came after the centre-half Ryan Bennett attempted a clearance which simply squirmed off his foot. Murray took advantage again and fired a shot straight through McGovern. The fifth was the worst of the lot, though, as Bennett’s partner, Timm Klose, decided to charge up the pitch through a crowd of players, pirouetting on the ball as he went. His audacity was met by a sound tackle and within seconds Anthony Knockaert’s deft dink hit the net.
Hughton’s safety-first approach never won over the Norwich faithful despite it keeping them in the Premier League. Neil has put the emphasis on offence and would rather win a match 3-2 than 1-0. It is in this context that Norwich’s errors can be understood as a desperate attempt to play positively at all costs. But it certainly seems that a dose of pragmatism might sometimes be a better option.
The Carrow Road club stick with their managers. They sacked Hughton with only five games remaining of the 2013-14 season that ended in relegation and they will probably back Neil. But an inability to keep clean sheets – only one so far this season – is putting real pressure on the team. Meanwhile Chris Hughton’s old‑fashioned virtues keep Brighton moving forwards.
Talking points
In reinforcing his point that the Championship does not allow for complacency, Chris Hughton reeled off teams he thought would push his Brighton side for promotion. The list included Newcastle United, Aston Villa, Derby County, Birmingham City and Huddersfield Town. Perhaps another candidate should be Slavisa Jokanovic’s Fulham, who played David Wagner’s early season leaders this weekend and claimed their own 5-0 victory.
Fulham began the season well, taking 11 points from 15 in August, including an opening-day victory against Newcastle. But September was as bad as August was good, with no wins and a 4-0 home defeat at the hands of Bristol City. In the past month the ship has been steadied. A 4-2 away win at Barnsley at the start of October has sparked a distinct upturn in form. The Cottagers came back from 2-0 down to draw with Norwich City, lost unfortunately against Aston Villa away and have now laid down a marker against the pacesetters.
As was the case with his Watford side, who won promotion in 2015, Jokanovic has crafted a blend of steel and style. Kevin McDonald and Stefan Johansen, a summer signing from Celtic, provide a powerful base for the creative talents of Sone Aluko and Lucas Piazon to play. But it is the return to form of Chris Martin that has led to the Cottagers climbing the table. His loan move from Derby was one of the summer’s stranger transfers as, on his day, the 27-year-old is one of the best strikers in the division. He scored a brace on Saturday, his second in three games.
The usual disclaimers apply, but Fulham have a capable squad and room for growth. “The job is not done,” Jokanovic said after the rout on Saturday. “We need to build on our confidence and philosophy. But we are in a learning process and beginning to build some kind of identity.”
• Last week they parted company with Karl Robinson after six years, and now MK Dons are looking for a new manager. Sitting just above the League One relegation spots with 16 points, the Dons lost 2-1 at Sheffield United on Saturday. The result was no great surprise as the fourth-placed Blades extended their unbeaten run to 11 matches. But it seems unlikely that caretaker Richie Barker is a serious candidate for the job full time.
More likely appears a continuation of the Dons’ reputation for giving young managers their break. Robinson got the job at 29 years of age and followed Roberto Di Matteo and Paul Ince in starting his career at the club. Now rumours suggest that Ryan Giggs might be considered for the role.
The hottest managerial property who has never managed, Giggs missed out on the Swansea job to Bob Bradley this month and recently ruled himself out of the vacancy at the Championship strugglers Wigan Athletic. But reports suggest the Dons owner Pete Winkelman wants to ascertain Giggs’s availability before making any decisions on his next manager. Another, equally intriguing, name mentioned in dispatches is that of Paul Mitchell, the former head of recruitment at Southampton and Tottenham Hotspur. Mitchell turned out 59 times for the Dons midfield during a four-year spell at the club.
• In League Two, Plymouth Argyle are sitting pretty. Top of the table with 35 points from 15 matches, the Pilgrims are unbeaten since the second game of the season, an away reverse against their nearest challengers Carlisle. Before Saturday’s match against Colchester, the striker Jordan Slew revealed what he thought was the secret to their success and the answer was simple: fitness. “We’re a strong team who are very fit and I think most other teams can’t handle that,” Slew told the Plymouth Herald. “That’s the beauty of it. We know that, come the last 20 minutes, we’ll be stronger and that we can get a goal any time. So we’re a very dangerous team right now and a lot of other teams in the division will fear us.”
Slew’s views are borne out by statistics. Before Saturday Argyle had scored seven goals in the last 20 minutes of matches, nearly a third of their total in the league. And on Saturday they did it again. With the match level at 1-1 and three minutes remaining on the clock, Ryan Donaldson had the energy to charge down Colchester keeper Sam Walker whose clearance smashed into the midfielder and looped back into the net. Plymouth held on to claim all three points. “The closer I got to him I thought ’this might hit me’,” Donaldson said of his goal afterwards. But he went on to confess: “Where it hit me I don’t know.”
