Why can't Brighton score? Stats say they should have netted 40 goals with chances created - instead it's just 26
There were times last week when it felt like the only logical explanation for Brighton’s wastefulness was that the players had decided they might as well get in on the joke. Their reputation as the Premier League’s most profligate team had long been secured, their goalscoring issues apparent to even the most casual onlookers, and yet still they found a way to make the problem even worse.
To miss one penalty in a crucial match against West Bromwich Albion would be typical of Brighton’s season. To miss a penalty and then an open goal was a little excessive, even for them. To then miss a second penalty, to go with everything that had gone before, was almost beyond belief.
And that is before we come to their previous game, at home to Crystal Palace. On that occasion they took 25 shots to Palace’s three, and still lost to a team that took just two touches in the Brighton penalty box. “The story of our season,” said midfielder Pascal Gross.
There is hardly a striker out there who has not gone through a barren spell or a poor run of form. That is normal, and it happens to the very best of them. What is so unusual about Brighton is that their inability to find the net, with even the most basic of chances, is not concentrated among one or two players. It is the whole team that has been infected by this problem, this collective loss of cutting edge in the most decisive moments.
According to the underlying statistics, Brighton would have expected to have scored 40 goals with the chances they have created this season. Their actual tally is just 26 and, in the last three matches, they have scored just one goal from 66 shots. So many opportunities that have gone to waste, so many points that have not been claimed.
We all know this is the case, not just because of those statistics but also because it is visible with our own eyes. The bigger question now, after so long without the issue being fixed, is simple: why does it keep happening?
Danny Welbeck, Neal Maupay, Leandro Trossard, Aaron Connolly, Gross. These are technically gifted footballers who have, for their entire careers, shown themselves to be capable of executing simple finishes, or indeed hitting the target with penalty kicks. And yet, right now, they all seem collectively incapable of doing the things they have done for most of their lives.
The assumption among many observers will be that the problem has become psychological. It will not be quite that straightforward, of course - we don’t know the finer details of how Graham Potter is coaching the players, or how the strange circumstances of this season have affected their bodies - but it seems likely that at least part of the problem is in their minds.
“It is never as simplistic as it looks,” says Paul McVeigh, the former Norwich City and Northern Ireland striker who is now a keynote speaker in performance psychology. “I would ask questions like, when did they miss the open goal? Was it in the first minute or the 90th minute? Were they fatigued? Was it a substitute who had not had many touches of the ball? It is very difficult to put it down to one single factor.”
What is clear, though, is that the more the players become aware of the issue, the more it plays on their minds and the more likely it is to continue. “It is how the brain naturally works,” says McVeigh. “If they are focusing more on the fact they don’t want to miss the chance, the brain is then focusing on missing the chances. The more the player is thinking about all of the things they don’t want to happen, it is making that outcome much more likely.”
Professor Andy Lane, a sports psychologist at the Centre for Health and Human Performance and the University of Wolverhampton, says a psychological solution would be to focus on recreating the feeling and emotions that come with scoring.
“It must be that they are overthinking it,” says Lane. “It is not coming naturally and each opportunity to score comes with overthinking the errors from previous times. They need to re-feel scoring.
“You would get Danny Welbeck, for example, and you would go through his highlights on YouTube. You would find videos of them scoring and recapture that feeling and what they were concentrating on. Looking at previous successes and replaying those in your mind is a great way to recapture a positive, winning feeling. You have to move back to when it was successful.”
One of the more interesting elements of the Brighton debate centres on the role of Potter and his coaching staff. How much blame should they take for the side’s poor finishing? Is too much focus placed on their exceptional build-up play, rather than ensuring the strikers do their jobs properly? Or are those strikers simply not good enough?
Opinions will vary depending on your view of the game, and how much you believe a coach can influence an individual player in a match. Some top managers focus intensely on the tiny details, such as a player’s body position when receiving possession, or which foot they use to control the ball in certain areas of the pitch. Others are more worried about providing a wider framework in which their players can operate.
“There are very few coaches who are actually going to help their players when they are on the pitch”, says McVeigh, who also played for Tottenham Hotspur and Luton Town. “Coaches are going to give them a rough shape, a formation, and then once the players are on the pitch they make thousands and thousands of decisions that have nothing to do with the coaches.”
Right now, for reasons that are no doubt beyond Potter and the players themselves, Brighton’s players are continually making the wrong decisions. They host Leicester City this weekend knowing that it needs to change, and quickly, before they become the best, but most wasteful, team to ever be relegated from the Premier League.
