At today's press conference the Gaffer confirmed that Scotty Parker is unavailable, having picked up his 5th yellow card last weekend. Otherwise all okay. Slightly surprised since Ryan Fredericks went off in the same game with a niggling hamstring - he don't have much luck with that injury. Our 'old boys' at Brighton will obviously be keen to prove point and while the loss of assistant coach Colin Calderwood to Villa just a week ago is a bit of a dampner for them, Hughton will be equally keen to get them back on winning ways. Brighton play quite similar to Wednesday in that they favour route 1 tactics; even if the furthest forward doesn't win the first ball their midfield move up quickly to try and win the second ball. Stockdale with his kicking accuracy fits into that plot very effectively. Hopefully Jokanovic and his coaches learned lessons from the Wednesday game. Not convinced that Fredericks will be fully fit, so he's my only change. .......................Button............ ..Odoi.....Kalas....Sigurdsson...Malone... .........................McDonald.... .......................Johansen.... .....Aluko.............Cairney.......Piazon... .........................Martin.....
That comment was made after our game at the Cottage against Norwich on 18th October. Well, SuperBri here's your chance. James Linington is up again tomorrow. Before that Norwich game, the one with the two Scott Malone penalties, Linington had given 49 yellows and 1 red. In the five games that followed he's added 25 yellows; giving him a whopping total of 74 yellows and 1 red in 15 games so far this season. That's as many yellows as he gave in all of last year. Hopefull his eyesight for the opposition fouling is not as short as his trip from the Isle of Wight tomorrow.
Oh no I was looking forward to the game till you told me that. The man and his assistants should have been banished to the minor leagues, guess they got a pat on the back. Need to be on top form in this game. According to Derby fans Martin has a good record against Brighton, so hope that continues.
Only one change from the prediction; Ayite is in for Piazon. However, an absentee of late, Neeskens Kebano, is on the bench. The team is: .......................Button............ ..Odoi.....Kalas....Sigurdsson...Malone... .........................McDonald.... .......................Johansen.... .....Aluko.............Cairney.......Ayite... .........................Martin..... Subs: Bettinelli, Ream, Fredericks, Sessegnon, Kebano, Piazon and Smith
Looks like something happened to the Isle of Wight ferry since there was a change of official, with wee Keith Stroud taking charge. Not that it mattered in the first half; Brighton couldn't get near enough to us to foul. We had a phenominal 62% possession, 86 % passing accuracy. And we had three times the number of shots than them. Some good keeping from Stockdale kept it to 1-0 at the break. Then they got tighter to us and the fouls started. Seven players booked in 15 minutes - noted that Button for us was for slow play and Martin for arguing. Can't help but wonder if the Button one had a bearing on the outcome - it was only 5 minutes after half time when he was wasting time (why?) and they scored immediately after. In that second half both teams had the same number of shots on goal. The difference was that Brighton were clinical and we were not. Another of those games where we didn't deserve to lose over the 90 minutes. Same story as so often this season though - we don't take our chances when we're dominating the game.
Here's a link to the Sky highlights which kind of shows how could have got more out of the game. As well as showing as much as you'll get at 9pm on the Football League Show. http://www.skysports.com/watch/vide...-and-hove-albion/10673261/brighton-2-1-fulham
Not really sure why we can't dominate a full game. We always seem have one good half and one half where we struggle. The first half was a dominant performance but didn't kill the game, but the second we struggled to scrap with them, and could have done with a Parker coming on to show the lads that we needed to scrap with them.
I think the first thing to say in Martin's defence he has never been lone striker material. I'd expect opposition managers to cut off the supply to Martin as their first priority. I said this before that our coach doesn't seem to have tactical awareness of how to play 3 up front. If you look at one of the best teams who play 3 up front Barcelona, none of the Neymar, Suarez or Messi are static in their position and they are always looking towards goal and interchanging, opposition can never setup on man marking they have to rely on a zonal back 4/5 and hope that any mis-match is quickly covered. There are so many things you can do with 3 up front but the only thing I've seen from our coach is swapping of right and left side every so often.
