Albion goalkeeper Jason Steele praised Albion’s performance in the final stages of the 4-2 victory over Tottenham Hotspur at the Amex, even though the team surrendered what had looked likely to be its first clean sheet in the Premier League this season.
Two cracking goals from Jack Hinshelwood and Pervis Estupinan and two nerveless penalties from Joao Pedro had put Roberto De Zerbi’s team 4-0 up after 75 minutes before replies by Alejo Veliz and Ben Davies made for a nervy nine minutes of added time.
“We have conceded goals, yes,” Steele said. “No problem, it happens, it’s football. But there were times were we just throwing ourselves to keep the ball out of the net, and that’s what we can be proud of, I think – the desire to win the game.
“And that’s all that matters. You can throw stats all you want but in the end we won the game, and we gave everything to win that game.
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“For 70 minutes we treated people to a proper Brighton performance, full of energy, full of hunger, full of desire and then for 20 minutes we held hands and dug in and gave everything for each other. That’s the sign of a proper team.”
Were the players concerned when the fourth official held up the board showing nine minutes of added time? “Of course we were! They had nothing to lose in the last 10-15 minutes so they are going to have that moment. We have a lot to be proud of in that last 20 minutes, the crowd got behind us, they cheered every clearance. It was special.”
During that spell of pressure from Tottenham, we saw some rarities from an Albion team under De Zerbi – Steele taking long goal kicks rather than playing the ball out of the six-yard box.
“There were a few and I think that is part of learning as a group,” he said. “They had the wind behind them and it would have been naive to try and play out from the back.
“We are not bothered about stats and all that carry on. We want to win football matches. Tottenham are a top, top team and sometimes you have got to do what you have got to do. We had to dig in, suffer and we did that.”
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The team played more long forward passes than usual from all positions, knowing that Tottenham favour a very high defensive line under Ange Postecoglou.
“You have probably never seen me kick that many balls long, but it worked. We have got targets for where we want to get to, and it is about winning games.”
It worked well as Albion dominated. “We were top for the first 70 minutes. We created loads of chances, we pressed high, we played like a team possessed and a team who showed we are ready to compete with these guys.
“We’ve been playing every three days since the start of the season. It has been brilliant but we haven’t been able to train anywhere near as much as we did last year. But if you look at the team we had out on Thursday wow, what a performance.”