Key events
City’s best player in the first half was Erling Haaland, who produced five shots and a goal. Their best player in the second half was James Trafford, their young goalie, whose rubber-limbed saves may yet keep Ederson on the bench.
“Trafford wasn’t even born when James Milner made his PL debut for Leeds,” says Kit Harrison. “The years keep on trucking. Cheers, Kit (42), Stalybridge.” Ha.
So City lose for the second time in a row. They’re even below Man United!
City are now 12th, with three points from three games. United, with four points, are lording it in eighth. And Brighton are 10th, back in a familiar seat.
Meanwhile West Ham have added a third goal at the City Ground. They leap to 15th, with three points, while Forest are ninth with four.
FULL TIME! Brighton 2-1 Man City
They’ve done it again! And the man of the match is Fabian Hürzeler, whose fearless quadruple substitution was the game-changer.
90+8 min Half-chance for City! Reijnders again, shooting from distance, and missing.
90+6 min Chance for City! Haaland has a rare touch in this half – a shot that goes so astray that it ends up as a cross. Then Rodri shows how it’s done with a lovely chip to Reijnders, whose header is well blocked by Van Hecke.
90+4 min Time for Dr No to make his final move. Hürzeler takes off the tireless Minteh and hands a debut to Diego Coppola – a defender replacing a winger. Hope he doesn’t live to regret that.
90+1 min Since the quadruple substitution, Brighton have had 11 shots to City’s two. And now they’ve come back from 1-o down to 2-1 up, just as they did on City’s last visit.
90 min City have seven minutes to rescue this. That was Brajan Gruda’s first goal at the Amex, and it may be on his highlights reel forever.
GOAL! Brighton 2-1 Man City (Gruda
Brighton counter and score! Lovely composed finish from Gruda, who passes the ball into an open goal.
88 min Save! Trafford does phenomenally to paw away a looping ball. But then …
84 min Half-chance for Brighton! They advance in numbers, Mitoma slips the ball out to Gruda, whose left-foot shot is too tentative.
84 min More subs from Pep: Lewis for Nunes at right-back, and Dias for Khusanov in the centre of defence.
West Ham have done it again! They lead 2-0, with a penalty from Paqueta. Graham Potter won’t be getting sacked in the morning, or the rest of the international break.
83 min The art of substitutions lies partly in who you leave on. Hürzeler kept faith with his wingers and now Minteh finds Mitoma in space in the inside-left channel. It’s a loose pass but Mitoma improvises beautifully and almost sends a tasty flick into the path of De Cuyper. With his changes, and his non-changes, Hürzeler has done wonders for Brighton’s confidence.
81 min City threaten again, only for Bobb to lob the ball over everyone.
In the other game, West Ham have scored! Jarrod Bowen has put them 1-0 up at Forest.
77 min City are beginning to reassert themselves. Veltman gets a yellow for a late challenge on Doku. City have a corner and Haaland gets his head to it but can’t keep the ball down.
74 min Gruda, who did well to set up Minteh just now, dances into the box and goes down. The defender dealing with him is Khusanov, who has to be careful, but there’s no second penalty.
72 min How will Pep react to this turning of the tide? By sending on two subs – Doku and O’Reilly for Silva and Marmoush, who was so good that you wonder if he is injured.
72 min Lovely from Minteh! A jink, a wiggle and a shot that goes just wide.
70 min City are rattled. Just before the pen, there was a yellow card for Khusanov, and now there’s another for Ait-Nouri.
68 min That was Milner’s first goal for Brighton, and it may have electrified the whole of the south coast. The Amex, which was half-asleep five minutes ago, is rocking.
GOAL! Brighton 1-1 Man City (Milner 67)
Milner plants it in the corner, of course he does, after sending Trafford the wrong way. What chance did a man of 22 have against a guy of 39?
It’s going to be James Milner. He last scored a PL pen in 2019!
The VAR is Paul Tierney … and he’s not going to overturn it.
Penalty! To Brighton
For handball, by Matheus Nunes, whose arm was up. “A much more obvious one,” Alan Smith reckons, than the contentious ones we’ve been seeing.
61 min Those subs in full: Milner for Baleba, Ayari for Hinshelwood, Rutter for Welbeck, Gruda for Gomez. So, of the front six, only the two flying wingers are still there – Minteh and Mitoma.
61 min Chance! The subs do the trick and Minteh, who looked lost in the first half, draws a fine save from Trafford.
61 min SUBS! Four of them, all for Brighton. It may take me the rest of the game to type them out, but among them is James Milner, ten years after he left City.
60 min As the hour glass flips over, City nearly get a goal that doesn’t involve Haaland! Marmoush, on the left, plays a lovely early cross with the outside of his right boot. Bobb, sliding in, is a second too late to get his shot on target.
56 min Bobb pops up in the box and goes on a giddy slalom, twisting between two players without getting a shot away. Off the ball, Haaland gives his marker a shove in the head.
“Watching the City game,” says Steve, “and they deserve the lead. But the fact they can fall over as a tactical choice, nowhere near the ball when Brighton are in possession so the ref stops the game, then City get the drop ball that they use to attack not just once but twice makes me hate football a bit. The ruthlessness of champions I suppose but feels wrong.” Or ex-champions.
55 min Even better from Brighton as Welbeck sends a fine through ball down the middle for Gomez. But again they spoil it as Gomez, losing a foot race with Khusanov, brings him down.
52 min Better from Brighton as Mitoma bursts into the box and back-heels to De Cuyper, who is fouled by Bernardo Silva. But Brighton can’t turn a free kick into a chance.
“Brighton regressing,” said William Morgan, before that. “They seem to be getting worse under FH. A world away from the football under RDZ. They look slow, uninspired and sloppy. One goal in 2.5 games and that a penalty.” Sounds as if you don’t think the League Cup counts.
50 min Brighton are still being untidy in a way that’s not like them. Hinshelwood plays a pass straight out of play.
48 min Half-chance! Marmoush, slipped through by Bobb, can’t quite deliver from a narrow angle.
47 min The five most accurate passers in the first half were all wearing black. You may already have guessed who was top of that table: Rodri, with 89 per cent (57 passes completed out of 64).
46 min Brighton kick off and do something they didn’t often do in the first half: they string ten passes together.
More from Eric Peterson. “The chatter around James Trafford moving ahead of Ederson in the Man City pecking order,” he argues, “calls to mind David Raya’s introduction to Arsenal as Aaron Ramsdale’s successor two years ago. Controversial at the time, premature in the eyes of many, and some growing pains to be sure, but it was always intended to be the long-range choice and it proved to be the right move. When it comes to the long term, better to make that kind of move a year too soon than a year too late.”
Interesting view! To my untrained eye, there’s one big difference. Raya was already a better keeper than Ramsdale then, whereas Trafford still has some way to go to catch up with Ederson. Opposing strikers would not be disappointed to see Trafford’s name on the team sheet.
Erling Haaland has played one pass, taken five shots, and scored one goal.
Brighton had only one shot in that half, the strike by Mitoma that brought a fine save from Trafford. That, according to Sky, is the fewest shots Brighton have had in a first half at home for ten years.
HALF-TIME! Brighton 0-1 Man City
So City hold onto their lead, and they deserve it. Since Haaland clicked into gear, after about 25 minutes, they have been much the better team. Brighton have found a few openings, but they will need to be far more precise in the final third.
45+3 min Brighton could be level! Minteh races away down the right, skips past Ait-Nouri’s high boot and gets his cross in, but it’s behind the onrushing Welbeck. Minteh then goes down with a head injury, which happily seems to be nothing serious.
News from elsewhere: VAR change at Anfield
A story from my colleague Andy Martin …
“Michael Salisbury has been stood down as VAR official for today’s Premier League clash between Liverpool and Arsenal.
“John Brooks will instead be in charge at Stockley Park after Salisbury’s controversial involvement in an incident during Saturday’s game between Chelsea and Fulham at Stamford Bridge.
“He intervened to ask match referee Rob Jones to go to the pitchside monitor after Fulham midfielder Josh King had scored 21 minutes into the game, and ultimately the goal was chalked off when team-mate Rodrigo Muniz was adjudged to have stepped on Trevoh Chalobah during the build-up despite minimal contact.
“It is understood the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) has acknowledged that the decision was an error and the incident did not meet the high bar for intervention as a clear and obvious error, and that referees’ boss Howard Webb has been in touch with Fulham.”
45 min There will be three more minutes. The delay early on, for Gomez’s injury, was about that long.
43 min Near-calamity! Verbruggen, receiving a poor back pass, is inches away from being hunted down by Haaland. He just gets the ball away in time, but only to another black shirt. Ait-Nouri ends up on the byline, whipping in a fine low cross that doesn’t quite find a team-mate.
40 min As things stand, City are fifth, level with Liverpool on points (six) and goal difference (+3), but behind them on goals scored (five against seven). And poor old Brighton are still 18th.
38 min City threaten again as Minteh loses the ball in their half. Marmoush almost gets away but he stays in the middle, where Brighton have about five players, when the ball surely needed to go wide.
Comment ×