Post Match report for the Watford game - Saturday, 8th February 2020

PREMIER LEAGUE: Brighton v Watford - 8/2/20, P26.

ALBION CONTINUE SLEEPWALKING TOWARD A PLACE OF SAFETY


VENUE: the Amex, Falmer - thirteenth home match of twenty-six fixtures to date.
RESULT: 1-1 ~ OG . (h-t 0-1) . SHAPE: 4-2-3-1 .
REF: an in & out ninety plus minutes that was reflective of the ongoing and overall tedium.


PRE-KICKOFF: Brighton fans assembled in the community stadium on city limits at Saturday teatime, although there was merely one Prem game already completed from which to extract applicable national scores.
In their supposed wisdom those PL authorities deemed this date as beginning of the English winter break for over half of representative clubs. Therefore a perverse new normality descended over all things considered of an elite nature.
GATE: 30,443 . WEATHER: dry & mild with breeze.

GRAHAM POTTER perused his revised 25 man squad to find little in the way of key personnel changes. He would go with what he had got for rest of this season and bear fruits from proverbial seeds planted or otherwise wither on the vine.

TEAM . . . . . . . . . . 1 Ryan
. 21 Schelotto, 4 Duffy, 5 Dunk, 33 Burn
. . . . . . . 18 Mooy, 24 Propper
. . . . 20 March, 13 Gross, 11 Trossard,
. . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Murray

BENCH: 27 Button, 30 Bernardo, 15 Webster, 46 Alzate (57), 16 Jahanbakhsh (73), 7 Maupay (61), 44 Connolly.


GOALS: 19 - 0-1. Hosts lost the ball in midfield and were counterattacked. Defenders retreated, stood off and the guy picked his spot.
78 - 1-1. Another attack down the right reached the by line, followed by a lateral low centre slammed in by a back-tracking defender.


INCIDENTS: Schelotto went down in the box after contact from behind. Ref was nonplussed.

YELLOWS: Schelotto stretched out a leg. March got involved too much.

SUBS: 57 - Burn was replaced by Maupay who joined Murray, March switched to left wingback.
61 - Gross who had previously dropped behind more advanced Mooy came off for Alzate in central midfield.
73 - Jahanbakhsh arrived in lieu of Schelotto as Albion reshuffled yet again.


SYNOPSIS: after a fluid opening phase hosts momentum faltered, while visitors were full of vim and pressed in all thirds.
Going a goal down changed locals approach, from one of basic control into merely chasing the game for an equaliser.
Potter reshaped early during the second period to more like 4222, with introduction of Maupay to assist Murray up front.
Throwing another winger on later in order to try and find a breakthrough saw Albion complete this tiresome contest looking more like a frequently desperate 424 formation.
At end of the day it was another tale of domestic football played in front of a quite capable travellers rearguard, which offered no real threat to regaining, nor altering, parity by blue & white actually scoring.
MoM - March, ran up & down, changed sides & positions, had a blast.

NUMBERS: poss 67%-33%, on target 2-2, off target 8-3, corners 3-2, fouls 12-9, yellows 2-2, subs 3-2.

CONSEQUENCES: another inept home display that temporarily maintains status quo with the bottom clubs until remainder of fixtures occur during the erstwhile winter break.

FS

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