This is an extract of The Score. Click the sign-up box below to receive the newsletter every Monday morning this season for Daniel Storey’s verdict on all 20 Premier League clubs
Roberto De Zerbi reached his peak as Brighton manager on 24 September last year. His team had just beaten Bournemouth 3-1, making it five wins from six games to start the league season. Brighton were third in the Premier League and had won three consecutive matches 3-1. Newcastle United and Manchester United were amongst the vanquished.
At that point, given his work last season after Graham Potter left, it appeared unthinkable that Brighton supporters would get sick of De Zerbi and his football. And true, there are no “De Zerbi out” protests and nor will there be. Brighton are still in the top half and these supporters know too much of their own history to risk entitlement.
But let’s just say that De Zerbi has burned through most of his accumulated goodwill. The messy Europa League defeat in Rome didn’t help, but there’s a perceived dogmatism to De Zerbi that supporters believe has manifested in an inability to keep clean sheets.
Having managed five wins in their first six league games of the season, Brighton have, improbably, added only six more since – Brentford, Forest (twice), Sheffield United, Crystal Palace included. Only during the 4-2 home win over Tottenham did De Zerbi’s side offer those flashes of last season’s magnificence, the surging, streaming football that made this team so aesthetically pleasing.
Losing Solly March and Kaoru Mitoma hasn’t helped, but the accusation is that the defensive uncertainty – defenders who can pass the ball and start attacking moves but get worse at actual defending – has blunted Brighton’s attack a little. Several key players have gone backwards in 2024 from 2023’s higher standards.
Since that win – 28 December – they have scored 13 goals in 13 games and five of those came in 65 minutes against Sheffield United. Brighton have become the opposite of what we’d grown to love: functional, frustrating, even a little forlorn. That has coincided with De Zerbi being linked to prestigious jobs across Europe. It’s not a combination that makes fans happy.
This is an extract of The Score. Sign up here to receive the newsletter every Monday morning this season for Daniel Storey’s verdict on all 20 Premier League clubs
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