We lost at Liverpool but I'm still dreaming of Brighton in Europe once again – opinion

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Ian Hart’s takes on Brighton’s latest frustration at Anfield

I was reporting on the Worthing FA Cup game on Saturday afternoon so therefore was only getting text updates from Albion’s visit to Anfield.

I was buoyed to learn about their early lead, but unfortunately my elation didn’t last, as by the time 5pm arrived, The Rebels had exited the cup and the Albion had been on the wrong end of a Liverpool comeback.

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But in the hours that followed, a number of people were waxing lyrical about the Albion’s first half performance and how they could and should have been home and hosed by half time.

Brighton's Turkish international Ferdi Kadioglu celebrates scoring the team's first goal with Yasin Ayari at AnfieldBrighton's Turkish international Ferdi Kadioglu celebrates scoring the team's first goal with Yasin Ayari at Anfield
Brighton's Turkish international Ferdi Kadioglu celebrates scoring the team's first goal with Yasin Ayari at Anfield

Obviously the proof is in the pudding and all that, so I personally reserved judgment until I’d seen the highlights on Match of the Day.

Clearly there are any number of ‘F’ words that will be part of the theme of Albion’s season.

Last week it was the obvious one, as the Albion capitulated and turned a cast iron three point against Wolves into a solitary one.

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Having now seen Saturday’s game its another F word that springs to mind, Frustration!

The observers, whether watching at Anfield or via fire sticks back in Sussex weren’t wrong, were stating the first half performance by Fabian Hurzeler’s Brighton side was one of the best 45 minutes of football we’ve seen from the Seagulls in recent times.

It was to quote the words of the classic terrace chant, at times “Just like watching Brazil.”

However back in the day Pele, Rivelino and the rest of the boys in Yellow and Blue invariably put a game to bed when they were that dominant!

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And that’s the frustrating bit, whilst the Wolves results still grates, I’m bordering on being actually more annoyed now that we didn’t come back down the M6 with something from Liverpool.

As Forest proved back earlier in the season, they were there for the taking. Another ongoing theme about the learning curve factor during the infancy of Hurzeler’s managerial tenure, but when will the Albion start acting on the lessons learnt and win games as a result of this?

The highlights don’t always tell the full story, so it took some time to do, but via the good old world wide web, I managed to watch the entire first half of the game at Anfield on Monday evening.

No cliche, or all this I couldn’t believe my eyes malarkey, but if that Albion squad, with the injured players still to return, can replicate those performance levels fairly consistently, then we will qualify for Europe.

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As Liam Brady famously once said, “If your grannie had wheels, she’d be a bus”, but if the Albion had played like that against the likes of Ipswich and the aforementioned Wolverhampton Wanderers, then I’ve not doubt we would be four points better off than we are now.

But there’s no point looking back, let’s look forward, an injury crisis at Manchester City, is this the right time to play Pep’s lads? Let’s hope so!

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