Fabian Hurzeler must find a way to get his team scoring goals again if Brighton & Hove Albion are to avoid being dragged into a relegation fight.
The task has been crystallised for the head coach for the rest of the season. It is all about 12 games to climb into calmer waters in the Premier League table following Saturday’s 3-0 exit from the fourth round of the FA Cup against Liverpool.
Goals win games but there have been precious few of them lately for Hurzeler’s ailing side. They failed to find the net for the third match in succession at Anfield. Only four goals have been scored in the last six league fixtures. There is no threat or confidence in front of goal to knock opponents out of a comfort zone.
The shortcomings were highlighted by a big opportunity for Diego Gomez to equalise in first half injury time. Gifted space inside the penalty area after Curtis Jones lost his footing, a tame finish by Gomez with the outside of his right foot was blocked with a leg by goalkeeper Allison. It would have put a different complexion on the contest if the Paraguayan had rapidly erased the 42nd minute lead Jones provided for Liverpool.
A total of seven shots (two on target) was the most efforts they had faced in the first half of an FA Cup tie at home since January 2020 against Everton (eight). There were other chances during the period when the tie was won and lost between the opener from Jones, Liverpool’s classy second goal in the 56th minute by Dominik Szoboszlai and Mohamed Salah’s 68th minute penalty after the Egyptian was clipped inside the box by Pascal Gross.
Jack Hinshelwood put a header wastefully over the bar from Harry Howell’s corner. Allison clawed away one-handed an angled header by Dunk from Gross’s free-kick. The difference between the teams was the decisive quality Liverpool showed in the final third of the pitch.
Dunk was exasperated in injury time when nobody was in the middle of the area to capitalise on an inviting cross by Kaoru Mitoma. Fellow second half substitute Georginio Rutter was stuck in no man’s land beyond the far post. The problem for Hurzeler’s side was summed up by former Brighton and Liverpool midfielder Adam Lallana, on TV pundit duty for TNT Sports. “It was an okay performance but without any killer instinct,” Lallana said.
They had more shots overall than Liverpool (17 compared to 13), but fewer on target (three versus five). It has been a recurring issue since the result that launched their decline at the Amex Stadium against Aston Villa in early December. They were fifth in the table then, Stefanos Tzimas having sealed a 2-0 win at Nottingham Forest in the closing stages, and they were 2-0 up against Villa inside 29 minutes.
But Tzimas suffered a season-ending anterior cruciate ligament rupture in the 24th minute of that match, which ended up in a 4-3 defeat. Just ten goals have been scored in 12 league games since then, a damaging slide which has produced a solitary victory, 2-0 at home to doomed Burnley.
Tzimas was beginning to find his feet when the injury ruled the 20-year-old Greek prospect out of Hurzeler’s No. 9 options. Not addressing the situation in the January transfer window has left the head coach alternating between Tzimas’s 18-year-old countryman Charalampos Kostoulas and 34-year-old Danny Welbeck.
Kostoulas struggled to make an impact in Saturday’s game (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)
Kostoulas, who started at Anfield, was snuffed out with ease by Virgil van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate. Welbeck was left on the bench. Injuries have plagued his career and Hurzeler can ill-afford to lose his main striker during the run-in.
Another headache for Hurzeler is that injuries and fitness levels have prevented him from using Mitoma on a regular basis in tandem with his other first choice winger, Yankuba Minteh.
Mitoma looked low on energy in the second half of last Wednesday’s 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa. The pair came on in a triple change with Rutter — who continues to be out of form — in the 62nd minute at Anfield. Salah’s spot-kick six minutes afterwards put the tie beyond reach.
Mitoma came on as a second-half substitute but had little impact (Lewis Storey/Getty Images)
Harry Howell started on the right flank rather than Minteh for the second time in three games. Howell has a bright future, but it is asking a lot for the 17-year-old and Kostoulas to thrive in a team currently bereft of self-belief and plummeting towards peril. Howell needed to show more vigour out of possession than a half-hearted attempt to block a probing cross from Milos Kerkez that led to the opening by Jones.
Hurzeler will attempt to shift the tide back to the prolific purple patch which culminated in the home loss against Villa — that made it 20 goals in ten games — with more finishing drills in training.
“Keep working on it, giving them the support and the right feeling that they have the quality to score,” he said of reversing the goals shortage. “Scoring goals is a lot about being in the right mindset and the right mood. The positive thing is we’ve had chances. If we didn’t create that many chances, I would be more concerned.
“It’s about bringing them into positions and now it’s about helping them and giving them the right support, bringing them in the right mood, having a different way of training to bring them more in front of the goal, more in these situations that they face in a game. Then I think it’s just one moment that can change the whole situation.”
Down to 14th in the table with a diminishing cushion above the relegation zone of seven points, the moment Hurzeler speaks of needs to come soon to arrest the decline.