I was actually very satisfied with Saturday's result and performance. In my opinion 2 goals and a clean sheet away from home is always a good day's work. At kickoff the ground was rocking and the flags waving- an inspiration to any home team, but Hughton was, I think, determined to avoid a real pasting. The first 15 minutes convinced Brighton that the only way to do this was to keep a back 6 and 4 in front of them. This conditioned the game. Moving the ball forward quickly wasn't an option too often because they rarely ventured too far up field and we were often winning the ball back very high up the field but with a back 6 still in their own box! We were actually involved in a siege, and there was very rarely space for taking players on, beating them and scoring. But we did persevere and we did create chances. These resulted from patience in probing for space, pulling players out of position or simply applying so much pressure that Brighton made mistakes. We had 2 disallowed, one rightly, one wrongly but Brighton couldn't do anything to prevent either, Jesus should have scored with a header and Kun missed the simplest of chances. Last season this would have been followed by the complaint that we drew a game in which we had 78% of the possession, but on Saturday we were much more solid at the back (on the very rare occasions we needed to be), kept the pressure up relentlessly and it paid off when we capitalised on two Brighton errors.
It was the first game of the season, we weren't at our best and I agree that we came inside far too often, often ignoring Walker. The problem on the left was that Danilo has, it seems, no left foot! Mendy can stay wide, stretch even a back 6 more and put some real beauties into the box for players like Aguero and Jesus (among others) who can find space in a phone box. And, of course, our bench looks like it is full of game changers at long last.
