Are Brighton title contenders? It’s all starting to look a bit Leicester 2016 down at the Amex
At least we have a definitive answer to one question now: Brighton v Crystal Palace is not a derby.
We suspected as much, but the sight of the formbook spending its Sunday afternoon sat so happily on the windowsill and never in a moment’s danger of going anywhere as Brighton eased to a record-equalling 5-0 dismantling of their supposed derby rivals is surely the end of the matter.
The Premier League’s best attack took on what is now both objectively and subjectively (rather than just the latter) its worst defence, and the outcome was settled inside an astonishing first 10 minutes.
The disarming thing about Brighton, though, is not just that they’re playing the most effective attacking football in the country, but that they’re combining it with the best defence. You have to say, it’s a policy with a lot going for it.
Their entirely and understandably giddy supporters seemed to sense the significance of this, one of the biggest cheers of the afternoon coming for a Jean-Philippe Mateta miss when it was already 4-0 and of no importance to the overall outcome. It was also just quite funny.
That miss also featured one of our favourite bits of low-key football business: a striker desperately looking and hoping for salvation from the lino’s flag after missing a sitter.
He and Palace didn’t even get that.
But preserving that clean sheet does feel big as well. It means Brighton have now won four straight Premier League games without conceding a goal. Four of the five league goals they’ve conceded this season came in one daft game at Chelsea back in August. The last Premier League goal they conceded was on the first Saturday in September against Leeds.
So while we can answer questions about whether this fixture’s a derby, there are some other questions starting to come into view now for Brighton.
The combination of their own startling football and, well, everything else going on this season means it becomes necessary to start asking some very big things indeed. Some ‘Leicester 2016’ sized things.
They couldn’t, could they? Well… yeah, they could. Nothing about this appears unsustainable. If you’re looking for a Premier League team with greater clarity of purpose, carrying a more profound shared understanding and expectation of what’s expected and required of them, you’ve got Arsenal and then End of List.
And after the way Brighton destroyed them here before the international break, even with the champions there’s a question mark.
Manchester City and Chelsea are more chaotic, and everyone else – including all other members of the disintegrating Big Six/Eight/Whatever – simply not as good as Brighton are at this time.
With the very obvious reasons why Manchester City might not in fact be title contenders this season despite on-field evidence to the contrary (and even on the field there are more evident frailties being shown by City than Brighton at this point) you do start to wonder just how special this could get for Brighton.
Palace could, not entirely unreasonably, point to an unorthodoxy to each of the three goals that ended the contest almost before it begun. An own goal. A big deflection. And in between those, the longest-range Premier League goal for almost a decade.
But that argument would hold more water if this hadn’t been entirely predictable. There was an inevitability about the surging Brighton attacks and just how little resistance Palace could muster to try and repel the waves of attack.
Anyone who has seen anything of Brighton this season and also watched the first 40 minutes of a game that somehow finished 3-1 in Palace’s favour against Nottingham Forest last weekend could not be remotely surprised to see that start.
They might, though, have had to concede some surprise at the sheer majesty of Diego Gomez’s long-ranger. You can’t ever really claim to have expected those.
It was the best kind of long-range goal as well, a skidding, scudding effort from almost bang on the halfway line that barely ever seemed to get above crossbar height before hitting the back of the net hard. The sort of halfway-liner that cruelly gives the desperately scrambling, back-pedalling keeper a false illusion of hope for almost its entire parabola.
No matter what else Brighton’s season may hold, it will remain one of the standout moments within it. No matter what else Palace’s season may hold, it will remain one of the standout embarrassments within it.
But the big question for both is the sheer scale and scope of those ‘what else’ possibilities. You fear for Palace, obviously, because they are just awful. But Brighton? What’s the opposite of You Fear For Them, You Really Do?
