[Albion] Brighton & Hove Albion vs AEK Athens *** Official Match Thread ***

[GoingUp]

Set pieces have been our Achilles heel for far too f***ing long

Miss the days of D&D both clattering everyone in sight and getting their head onto everything.

 

[AmexRuislip]

Indeed. And even if we lose - it's still pretty exciting.

Of course, I'm tuned in the old fashioned way, the wireless

 

[BRIGHT ON Q]

Solly looks a bit overwhelmed

 

[The Fits]

They are Greek Champions, they are not exactly terrible

Not terrible but the Greek league is ranked well below the Scottish one and we know people's to attitudes to that on here.

 

[HastingsSeagull]

Reckon 1-2 is about right for that half. Lucky we have 11 more halves in this group and need to make all of them much better than that one!

 

[WhingForPresident]

West Ham all over again.

 

[Farehamseagull]

Our best player so far

You obviously watched that half so I assume you saw Joao Pedro play?!

Igor has been good but JP the best player on the pitch by quite some margin.

 

[AlexBH]

Two terrible bits of defending from set pieces, non existent marking. We’re throwing this game away at the moment. Only played well in patches. Passing has been off today, Van Hecke has given the ball away a few too many times.

 

[Mr Bridger]

Why’s Billy Gilmour got an old man’s neck?

 

[Bodian]

They have been extremely good at totally disrupting our normal fluent moves and not letting us settle at all. This is more down to them than us playing badly.

 

[GoingUp]

Solly looks a bit overwhelmed

He's made some good runs and not been picked out. JPVH had a chance near the end, you would think Dunk would have attempted it.

 

[The Fits]

Yeah JP has been brilliant, again.
Igor looks good on the ball but as suspected a CB of he and JPVH is likely to struggle defensively.
We need to get on the ball more. Haven't seen a game for a long time where we've put such few passes together.

 

[Shooting Star]

I can't tell if Igor has been at fault defensively for any of the goals, but he is absolutely Rolls Royce bringing the ball out of defence into midfield.

 

[Bodian]

West Ham all over again.

No - West Ham we were in complete control, except for conceding goals on the break. They've not let us have any real control at all tonight.

 

[Farehamseagull]

If we don’t get an equaliser early, prepare yourself for some insane levels of shithousery and timewasting!

 

[Mustafa II]

This is a wake up a call, a welcome to European football, unprecedented territory for most of our players.

AEK have a wealth of European experience and have been confident, fast, strong and determined. Their game plan is effective, and they have scored two great set-piece goals.

They deserve to be winning at half time.

We haven't been 'poor', but we have certainly been below-par, and that's being generous. Dunk's captaincy in particular we have missed a lot. Credit to the opposition for their excellent set pieces, but we defended against them very poorly.

I think there might be an element of nerves on this big occasion, coupled with inexperience and dealing with the unknown. AEK are something very different to what we know from the Premier League.

I'm not convinced we can win this one. European football is clearly a different beast. But who knows what RDZ and the team can pull out of the bag in the second half. We are considerably better than them technically - but all they know is winning.

 

[Fiskmås]

Stressed, stressed, stressed, you can tell there are nerves involved tonight. Gone is the patient build up from the back, choosing the wrong passes just to get it forward (or are they more hesitant to pass the ball back to Igor than Dunk?). A proper big-ballz speech from de Zerbi in half time and we’ll turn this around.

 

[portslade seagull]

We are not quite clicking at the moment. Either Veltman or Webster need to come on

 

[Mike Small]

Need more from March and Fati. We could do with pressing them even more too.

 

[WhingForPresident]

No - West Ham we were in complete control, except for conceding goals on the break. They've not let us have any real control at all tonight.

Fair point.

Unbelievable that the ref still hasn't done anything about their time wasting. Must have been 15 mins wasted.