Club news

Hughton Applauds Positive Reaction

By Kieran Cleeves • 01 September 2018

Brighton & Hove Albion manager Chris Hughton praised his players for their reaction to going two goals behind at the Amex Stadium, and believes a draw was the least the Seagulls deserved against Fulham this afternoon.

Glenn Murray’s second-half brace levelled the game after goals from Andre Schurrle and Aleksandar Mitrovic put the Cottagers 2-0 ahead, and Hughton was pleased with the character shown by his players.

He said, “I’m delighted to get a draw out of the game, it’s nothing less than we deserved. When you go 2-0 down at home against a very good side at keeping possession, you have to be grateful for what you’ve got.

“The frustration is that for 20 minutes we were excellent. We played really well and had a few chances. If we’d scored in that period of time, they would have been on the back-foot.

“We got the penalty and if we score it, that momentum continues. But the penalty save lifted them and deflated us a little bit. They got more hope from that period of the game.

“But I have to give our lads credit - after they scored their second goal, our reaction was excellent and we might have even won the game towards the end.”

Hughton made a double change after Murray’s first strike, as the Seagulls went in search of an equaliser, and the Albion boss explained the formation change that helped Albion pile on the pressure.

“You have to try and do it in a controlled way, because if you go gung-ho at that stage, with the system they were playing and the players they’ve got, they’ll go on to get a third goal.

“But you’ve got to be positive. We decided to go 4-4-2 with [Alireza] Jahanbakhsh on the right-hand side and we dropped [Yves] Bissouma in.

“In a structured way, we went for it. You need that little bit of fortune and we had that with the second penalty. I haven’t seen it yet, but I have no doubt it was a penalty.

“Our endeavours in the game forced that, and we got nothing short of what we deserved.”