The wait goes on for Fabian Hurzeler to get a 90-minute performance from Brighton & Hove Albion.
The most infuriating aspect of the German’s first 15 games as a head coach in the Premier League is the manner in which his team has failed to see out games from winning positions against struggling sides.
The latest exhibit at Leicester City on Sunday was almost as bad as the 2-2 home draw against Wolves in October. On that occasion, they were 2-0 up until the 88th minute, but ended up conceding a 93rd-minute equaliser moments after a misplaced pass by Matts Wieffer with Wolves outnumbered four against one in a Brighton attack.
This time they were 2-0 up until the 86th minute when Jamie Vardy halved Leicester’s arrears. Improbable parity for the hosts was delivered in the 91st minute by substitute Bobby De Cordova-Reid, who exchanged passes with Vardy after Igor Julio conceded possession when running with the ball inside his own half. It was another individual mistake with severe consequences.
Hurzeler, reflecting afterwards on two more points given away, said, “After the first goal, Leicester came stronger. They went for the second goal, but in the end, it’s our fault, our responsibility. We need to be much more mature, much more clear how we solve things in the last minutes, and then these things won’t happen.”
Hurzeler spoke about the missing ingredient from his team — a complete display from the first minute to the last — prior to the 1-1 draw against bottom club Southampton in the last home game at the end of November, which fleetingly lifted them to second in the table (they are now seventh).
He told The Athletic at that time: “I miss the consistency in our game. We’ve had a lot of good phases, good 35 minutes, but missing from our style of play is 90 minutes with a good defensive balance and offensive control of the game.
“That is what we are working for and that only comes by working, by analysing things, by mentioning to the players that we want to stick to our principles, continue playing in our style, no matter how loud the atmosphere is, how the game is going, or if we are one man down (Carlos Baleba was sent off in the preceding 2-1 win at Bournemouth).
“We want to keep doing our thing by adapting to the opponent but sticking to the principles, to our style of play, and then we have to improve to do it consistently.”
Leicester was as near as Hurzeler’s team have been to a complete performance. They controlled the match and should have been further ahead at half-time than Tariq Lamptey’s sublime curling effort from distance, his first Premier League goal for four years.
Yankuba Minteh was introduced as part of a triple change by Hurzeler with Danny Welbeck and Matt O’Riley after 70 minutes, which was designed to seal the deal. The right-winger appeared to have achieved that aim with a clinical finish nine minutes later after twisting and turning inside the Leicester box.
Hurzeler remarked ruefully: “We had 80 minutes, so we are getting closer to the 90 minutes, and we’re working on it.”
Hurzeler has to shoulder some of the blame. Speaking after that Southampton draw — which marked Lewis Dunk’s return from injury as a substitute rather than as a starter — about the possibility of switching to the back five he often deployed at St Pauli last season, Hurzeler stated: “I think we have too many offensive players to go with three at the back. You have to adapt to the profiles you have here and what fits best for the team. That’s, I think, a back four.”
Hurzeler curiously then switched to a back five in last Thursday’s 3-1 defeat at Fulham, reintroducing Dunk between Jan Paul van Hecke and Igor after they had both performed well in the skipper’s absence. The system change was not responsible for the loss — Fulham’s first two goals were soft giveaways — but it did not fully utilise the biggest strength of the squad in the array of attacking talent.
A return to Hurzeler’s go-to 4-2-3-1 setup since taking charge in the summer worked smoothly at Leicester until conceding the first goal when they reverted to a back five by bringing on Igor for left-winger Kaoru Mitoma in the 89th minute.
Explaining the change, Hurzeler said: “The first goal for them happened out of nowhere. A shot, we defended it and then it went to Jamie Vardy. And then after that, we wanted to go with a back five to just defend the goal. I think the last four or five minutes Leicester would try everything, they put a lot of players in our box, so you need to add another player, so unlucky.”
There was an element of sod’s law attached to Igor’s part in Leicester’s equaliser, but the absence of game management is proving expensive. There was enough experience on the pitch to see the match out, despite Hurzeler fielding his youngest Premier League line-up of the season with an average age of 24 years and 85 days — also Brighton’s fourth-youngest ever in the competition.
Six points have slipped away from winning positions against teams in the bottom five of the table (Wolves 2-2, Southampton 1-1, Leicester 2-2). The pattern of wastefulness against lowly opposition does not bode well for the visit on Sunday of traditional rivals Crystal Palace.
(Top photo: Hurzeler and Brighton players; by Carl Recine via Getty Images)
