Mid-table is in the eye of the beholder. These two teams are a point apart halfway down (or up) the Premier League table. For the ninth-placed visitors it is a cause for doubts, uncertainty and the odd glance over the shoulder. For the hosts, now in 12th, it means success, affirmation and calls for feet to stay connected to the ground.
Southampton took an early lead thanks to Steven Davis, who turned home a rebound from James Ward-Prowse’s well-executed free-kick. Glenn Murray restored parity shortly after half-time with a canny striker’s header. There were few other chances to write about, which suited neither manager, but their mutual disappointment came from very different perspectives.
“Confidence is as high as it’s been this season‚“ said Brighton’s Chris Hughton. “We’ve got good players and if we play at the right level we know we’ve got a chance of getting results. Home form will be so important for us in this division and it was just the end product that was lacking today. We had a lot of play in the final third but we didn’t create enough clear-cut chances.”
Hughton’s counterpart Mauricio Pellegrino, said: “We did the most difficult thing. We were in front with an early goal. But when you let your opponent back into the game in this division, every single team has the quality to hurt you. Brighton are mentally very high right now. We played well but when you control the game you must play with more determination to score the second one and kill the game.”
Brighton are no longer everyone’s favourites for relegation after a solid start to the season was capped by last week’s eye-catching thumping of West Ham at the London Stadium. Southampton, for their part, are still perceived to be struggling for form. Indeed if you include Claude Puel’s time at the club, the jury has been out on the Saints for longer than the average fraud trial.
Goals are the main concern for both teams. Pellegrino’s side have scored nine in 10 games, Brighton just one more. The word dour has been applied to both sides this term, but it has always seemed a little harsh when applied to Hughton’s team, not just because every point scraped from solidity is one towards safety but also because they tend to play with an attacking four, including two wingers. Saints went 4-3-3 here but struggled to make an impact with Sofiane Boufal and Dusan Tadic nominally playing out wide but neither showing much appetite for it.
Boufal it was who set in motion the events that led to Southampton’s goal in the seventh minute. The foul he drew from Dale Stephens on the edge of the Brighton box wasn’t much of one, if indeed it was one at all, but Ward-Prowse made the most of the dubious advantage. Standing square of the ball the England international, making only his third league start of the season, took a minimal run up and drove his kick over the wall and off Mathew Ryan’s crossbar. Davis beat Shane Duffy to the rebound and scored with a bouncing header.
Brighton are not used to being broken open so quickly in matches. Equally they are not at their most comfortable when chasing a game. But in their doppelganger wingers, Anthony Knockaert and José Izquierdo, they had the game’s most effective performers.
With both men in tandem for just the second time, newly promoted Brighton’s attacking play was faster and more confident than in the opening weeks of the season. Izquierdo’s pace was a real threat while Knockaert had the cuteness of touch to find space in small pockets. Both made a talented Southampton back line work hard for their corn.
The scores became level seven minutes after the restart. When the ball came to Knockaert on the edge of the box, he had the presence of mind to lay it off to Pascal Gross who was waiting wide right. The German swung a deep cross to Murray who had peeled off his marker and used his height advantage over right back Cédric Soares to head past Fraser Forster at the near post. It was the German’s fifth league assist this season (one fewer than Kevin De Bruyne), and Murray’s third goal. Once again, however, there will be questions over Forster, whose positioning was suspect and reactions slow.
The match drained away as both coaches sought to affect minor change through tactical substitutions, the risk of losing everything greater than the chance of a win it seemed.
“It was unlucky because the ball deflected off Cedric and surprised the keeper‚“ Pellegrino said of the equaliser. Hughton, not surprisingly perhaps, took a different perspective. “It was an excellent header. There was only one place he could score and he put it right in that corner.”
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