Coastal erosion: Perilous times as record-breaking goalless run threatens Brighton’s future

FAILING to become the first visiting team to score at Tottenham’s new ground on Tuesday night means Brighton have gone six Premier League games without a goal.

It’s seven in all competitions which is a new club record, and everyone loves club records. The last time Albion went six without a goal in the league was in in the autumn of 1970, down in the third tier in an unremarkable mid-table season notable mainly for the players turning out in an all-white kit. No stripes, no goals, no bother.

Forty years on and the pressure on Albion is ramped up considerably. Though it’s still more likely that Neil Warnock’s Cardiff will join Huddersfield and Fulham in the Championship next season, Brighton’s recent scoreless existence has dragged them to the very edge of the danger fields. A win against Newcastle this weekend seems vital, given they end their season with games against Arsenal and Manchester City, yet to beat Rafa Benitez’s team Brighton will need to score. Score a goal. In a goal.

Since they won at PSG, Manchester United have scored one more goal than Huddersfield and two more than Brighton, who haven't scored since March

— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) April 24, 2019

If Brighton don’t then it’ll be only the sixth time in the history of the Premier League that a team has played seven successive without scoring. The list contains some memorably underwhelming teams, including the most recent iteration of Sunderland seen in the top-flight, who failed to score in 13 of their last 17 games in 2016-17 (Netflix and Nil), the Ipswich team that lost 9-0 to Manchester United in 1995 (that rinsing being only the second of their seven goalless games in a row) and the Derby team, you know which one.

Pleasingly for beleaguered Brighton fans, though, it’s their rivals Crystal Palace who have embarked on the two longest Premier League runs without a goal. There was an eight game spell in 2017 that involved three different managers (Sam Allardyce for one game, Frank de Boer for four and Roy Hodgson for three) and the biggest of them all, nine games between November 1994 and January 1995.

Palace had won four in a row before starting that nine-game run and there had been little sign of the goals drying up. Manager Alan Smith had set out his personal philosophy during that positive run, when the league season promised so much more: “Sometimes players get in the Premiership, and they think they have to do things differently. They think they have to pass the ball around all the time. But at the end of the day it all comes down to commitment.” Commitment only went so far, though, and Palace ended the season in an unusually expansive four-team relegation zone.

That’s the history covered. What about the science? Why have Brighton gone from a reasonably balanced side to one engaging in graphic game management to try and get a nil nil at Spurs? Possibly because their reliance on Glenn Murray was always going to reach its limits at some point, and that point may have been reached at Selhurst Park in March, the last Premier League match in which he, and indeed Brighton, scored a goal.

The problem is that Murray receives a generous share of Brighton’s goalscoring opportunities; as the table below shows, he has a higher proportion of his team’s Expected Goals this season than Harry Kane at Tottenham or Mohamed Salah at Liverpool. It’s all very well putting most of your eggs in a basket called Aubameyang or Vardy, but Brighton’s time in the Premier League has been characterised by their repeated inability to sign forwards consistent enough to take some of the strain from the legs and head of Glenn Murray. Their current goal drought is the inevitable consequence.

Since Brighton last scored, even Huddersfield have scored five times in the league, yet Albion look likely to get another chance in the big time next season. What they do with it depends hugely on who the club can persuade to lead their line in 2019-20. Otherwise we could all be doing this again in 12 months time, and nobody, Chris Hughton in particular, needs that.

A £10 bet on Brighton to be relegated returns £55