Aside from the timings of the goals and a few stats; that was almost identical to last season’s visit to the AmEx Community Stadium.
More worryingly – and I can’t speak for you, of course – was that I could just sense it coming during the game.
It felt inevitable
Wasted chances, no step up in tempo and a home side that you could tell was smelling blood. At 0-1 up, I said to my wife that if we don’t start taking our chances and retaking control of the game after a lot of possession, once again, in the first half at least, then it’s going to lead to them having their chances.
Soon after that? BANG! Penalty. Bit later? BANG! 2-1 to the home side. Groundhog Day.
They were sickening blows but not as sickening as watching my City side with the apparent-same issues as last season. Even one of my favourite players, Oscar Bobb, was guilty of dithering on more than one occasion yesterday; almost like he was low on confidence to fully take on his man / men. On the one occasion he used his immense talent to dance through 2 or 3 Brighton players he just couldn’t carry the ball all the way through with him.
At the other end, a stupid error and then being stretched and overloaded on yet another opposition counter attacking break sealed our fate.
And to add insult to injury, after a fairly decent start where possession was, once again, our main weapon of choice; far too many of our players faded to the point where they only deserved 4s, 5s and, at best, 6s. For me, only James Trafford earnt his pay on the day.
No guts and no leadership on the pitch was the main theme from our supporters who could bring themselves to speak on local radio after the worsening display in the second half.
The manager
“Pep has been found out”, were the shouts from opposing fans last season. In close season, the club decided to bring in an additional Pep (Lijnders); an Assistant Manager to Jurgen Klopp and his ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’-style football.
Backed up by new-attacking, creative midfielders, many City fans expected, at the very least, a noticeable tweak to our play; certainly attack wise. But apart from looking a bit more direct against Wolves, no…not since.
Possession, possession, possession is our marching tune; create loads of chances, sometimes get a goal in front, switch off and then get punished. It’s like a reoccurring bad dream.
Am I reading last season’s script there or the script from our last two games? Either way, they’re the same.
Of the fans who phoned into BBC Radio Manchester, I didn’t hear one, overreacting, ranting person who was suffering post-match emotions and in addition to almost all of them asking where the guts and leadership was; every single one of ‘em, when asked about what they’d like on the final day of the summer transfer window, said, “A right-back” without hesitation.
Will filling that position with a quality signing fix all of our problems? Well, from all that I’ve written above the answer is definitely, “No”. But it would go a long way to help with some of our defensive frailties? I say, “Yes”.
Before a ball was even kicked in yesterday’s fixture a pundit on Radio Manchester gave out an ominous warning about how this was likely to be a dangerous game; adding that in addition to a confident-sounding Brighton manager, to him Pep looked like a worried man ahead of this match.
Last season, I kept brushing off and brushing off again all talk of Pep losing it; Pep being found out and Pep being far too stubborn to change his ways. When Pep Number 2 came in, I thought that had answered the last slur against our manager - he was prepared to listen to a change of mindset as other sides adapt to our once-threatening ways.
Now, starting from just turned 4:00pm yesterday, I’m starting to have some doubts about our hero of a manager and I don’t like that feeling.
Two weeks off domestically now. Is it two weeks to fix things or is it two weeks to rankle and worry about whether we can find our old selves ahead of Manyoo, a returning Kevin De Bruyne in a Napoli shirt and then Arsenal.
Yikes…