Southampton actually enjoyed some breathing space. It was not for long, admittedly, given it took Brighton a little under two minutes to set home nerves jangling again. Saints’ players may struggle to recall that blissful century of seconds when the stuffing appeared to have been knocked out of their opponents and they were coasting serenely towards only a second home league win in 10 months. In the end the overriding sensation was one of familiar, numbing disappointment, of the kind they endure too often on their own patch.
That was soon overtaken by livid frustration. “We were 2-0 up against an opponent we have to beat … it’s not good enough,” grumbled Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, scorer of the game’s most spectacular goal far earlier in the match. As panic gripped in stoppage time, he watched aghast as James Ward-Prowse was penalised for fouling Shane Duffy and the referee awarded a penalty.
Brighton are making a habit of eye-popping comebacks but that was no consolation for Southampton. They have dropped 26 points from winning positions in the Premier League since the start of last season, and 13 in 13 matches under Mark Hughes.
It was Glenn Murray, inevitably given his penchant for scoring against Saints, who maintained his composure to convert the penalty, stroking his 98th Brighton goal beyond Alex McCarthy to complete a second successive two-goal comeback.
The goalkeeper must still have been staggered that it had come to this given his excellent save to deny Jürgen Locadia seconds earlier only for Ward-Prowse, one of the smaller players on the pitch and seeking to block off Duffy at the set piece, to commit his offence at the resultant corner. Hughes pointed out the centre-half is “a big boy and has gone down a bit easily” but his real exasperation centred on the wastefulness of it all. Brighton might have been buried by the break. They should certainly have been seen off at 2-0.
To have claimed some kind of reward from such an anaemic first-half display said much about the character of Chris Hughton’s side. It had been Hojbjerg whose goal had left them winded, the Dane taking a touch as he collected 30 yards out and, with Yves Bissouma slow to close him down, cutting across the ball with the sweetest of connections to rip his shot towards the far corner where it swerved beyond the sprawling Mat Ryan.
That merely confirmed Saints’ dominance given the excellence of Ryan Bertrand and Nathan Redmond down the left. Mohamed Elyounoussi and Danny Ings should already have scored by then. Southampton had departed at the interval mystified by their lead being still so slender.
Ings would earn himself a clearer sight of goal after the break after darting into the penalty box and slipping in a tangle of legs under Gaëten Bong’s challenge. A third reward in four games was claimed from the penalty spot, with Gareth Southgate watching on from the stands and presumably more inclined than ever to recall him to the England fold. As the players ambled back into position from their joyous huddle, Southampton dared to dream they had done enough.
Brighton had already offered flashes of renewed urgency even before Ings’ goal but Duffy’s immediate reply, nodding Anthony Knockaert’s free-kick down and beyond McCarthy, pepped the visitors’ belief and punctured Saints’ optimism.
“After the way we performed in the first half we got away with one,” Murray said. “We were poor, under par, but the second half was a different game.”
Locadia and Alireza Jahanbakhsh injected pace, buzzing disconcertingly at the striker’s back, with Jahanbakhsh flicking a shot on to the post. Knockaert, unleashed, tormented his markers and in the end Saints cracked.
Hughes, slumped in his dugout, had seen this all before too often. He praised his team’s “progressive approach” and pointed to their initial urgency as evidence they can play with confidence in a stadium where winning has become so elusive. But he was left to bemoan an inability to close out contests “when opponents say: ‘Sod it, let’s throw people forward and take a few risks.’”
They had somehow preserved a lead at Crystal Palace in their previous game, McCarthy denying Christian Benteke from point-blank range before the visitors scored a second with virtually the last kick, but that felt like an exception. This late wilt has long since become their norm. That breathing space was always a deception.
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