We ask both sets of fans to forgive the comparison, but if we’re crediting Brighton’s arch-rivals Crystal Palace with a late-season renaissance that suggests a potentially promising season next time, then the Seagulls are on the opposite trajectory. A league table based only on the second half of the season would have had them in 17th.
The reasons Brighton dropped off as badly as they did are obvious, but not necessarily easy to explain. They were defensively largely inept for one, keeping just six league clean sheets all season, the first of which did not come until January 2.
By the time they did get that sorted out, they had stopped scoring goals: they went from exactly two per game in the first half of the season (the fifth-best record in the league, and better than Arsenal) to scoring just 17 goals in the second half of the campaign, worse than anybody except Everton.
Chuck in that they have just lost their most productive player – Pascal Gross, with 14 combined goals and assists last season – and you’d forgive a bit of misery from Brighton fans.
But on the whole, at least from speaking to a few Seagulls we know, there is instead a sense of cautious optimism that what they have come to regard as normal business will resume under Fabian Hurzeler, the 31-year-old plucked from St Pauli to get them back on track after Roberto De Zerbi’s departure.
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De Zerbi’s exit may well prove be the best thing that could have happened for Brighton. Those who watched highlights, or whose focus (understandably) is on what they did on the ball, will have seen the exciting attacking play of Gross, Kaoru Mitoma and Joao Pedro. But plenty of those who gave Albion a closer eye will tell you that defensively, they were all over the shop.
That dreadful defensive record didn’t happen by accident, and the bare numbers show that De Zerbi took Brighton backwards off the ball: their 62 goals conceded last season was their worst in their seven Premier League campaigns to date. In fact, it was their worst since they finished 16th in League One in 2008/09. On a goals per game basis, it was Brighton’s worst defensive record since they were relegated from the third tier in 1991/92.
Attributing that to the former gaffer may be overly-simplistic. Brighton have badly missed Moises Caicedo since selling him to Chelsea, despite making numerous attempts to replace his influence in midfield. This summer they have signed another, with Mats Wieffer coming in from Feyenoord with a bag full of impressive statistics all round, but particularly in his defensive contributions.
Whatever the cause of Brighton’s struggles last season, it gives Hurzeler issues to tackle at both ends of the field, usually suggestive of the need to find a better balance. But in Brighton’s case you feel the issues in attack largely came down to availability last season: both Mitoma and Evan Ferguson missing the majority of the second half of the campaign.
The upshot is that Mitoma and Pedro started together in just six Premier League games last season, the last of which was just before Christmas. Brighton lost just one of those six games, and that was against Manchester City.
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Unsurprisingly, then, Brighton moved to bring in two new attacking recruits for the first team, in the shape of Nordsjaelland youngster Ibrahim Osman and Newcastle United’s Yankuba Minteh, who ripped it up with ten goals and five assists on loan at Arne Slot’s Feyenoord last season.
Getting their new arrivals and returning stars firing while tightening things up at the back is still a difficult balance to strike for Hurzeler, though – but one he has succeeded at before.
St Pauli had scored 23 goals and conceded 25 in their 17 games before Hurzeler took over midway through the 2022/23 campaign. Under his charge, they scored 32 and conceded 14 in the second half of the campaign, making them comfortably the best side in the German second tier over that period; before they had been 15th out of 18, and just two points from bottom. Last season they had the best defensive record in the division as they topped the table to earn automatic promotion.
The lack of panic around the Brighton fanbase despite that dismal end to the season is reflective not just of their hopes of getting key players back from injury, and not just of Hurzeler’s impressive record to date, but of the trust they have in a regime that has led the club to comfortably the greatest period in its history.
The question hanging in the air is just how long that era can last. Their superlative recruitment both on the pitch and in the dugout is a hard trick to maintain year after year; as Southampton found out a decade ago, that well can run dry and suck you down into the void left behind.
Brighton still have faith they are a long way from reaching that point.
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