Brighton: Tottenham Hotspur manager, Ange Postecoglou branded his team’s defeat at the south coast as the worst since he took over as head coach of the London side. His players threw away a 2-goal lead in the first half to go down 3-2 after Brighton had found the net for all their goals in a space of 18 minutes in the second half.
Postecoglou said: “We just weren’t competitive. We didn’t do what we need to do at this level. We didn’t win our duels, we lacked intensity, we didn’t deliver the things you need to, the basics of the game and paid the price for it.
“You can understand that you are not going to win every game but there’s a manner you lose games and that’s the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve lost the game in that manner. It’s unacceptable.”
He added: “You understand that at 2-0 obviously they are going to come out and be fairly aggressive in their approach, but that’s not the first time we’ve faced that and we’ve usually dealt with it pretty well. But today we failed to do things we needed to do. And rightly so, we got punished for that.”
Spurs could have been at least five goals up in the first half, such was their dominance during that period. James Maddison could have had the opener when he deflected in a header from Timo Werber from close range but Porro was off side before he had put in the cross.
Shortly before the break Johnson could have had a third goal for Spurs when he received a pass from Kulusevsky but he put the ball high over the bar. That was a glaring miss.
However, Tottenham took the lead in the 23rd minute when Maddison won the ball from Rutter and fed striker Dominic Solanki who then put in a lovely pass to Johnson to sweep in a shot past Bart Verbruggen with his left foot.
Tottenham doubled the lead in the 37th minute when Maddison’s low shot from a square pass from Werner was fumbled by Verbruggen as it went into the goal.
Brighton wasted no time after the break to get on the attack and just three minutes after the start when neither Micky Van de Ven nor Destiny Udogie could clear a cross from Kaoru Mitoma, Minteh was able to slam in at the far post.
Ten minutes later, Brighton drew level when Rutter took a short through ball from Mitoma and scored into the corner after holding of a weak challenge from Udogie.
Brighton kept the pressure on as the second half progressed while Spurs defence began to look more frail and midway through the half Brighton found the winning goal with Rodrigo Bentancur failing to stop Rutter from crossing and Danny Welbeck rose high for his downward header for the third goal.
A delighted Brighton manager, Fabian Hurzeler said: “I’m really proud with how my team reacted because they took the responsibility, and they showed all their character and personality in the second half. We completely deserved the victory.”
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