Manager Chris Hughton has given his thoughts on Monday’s victory over Fulham and centre half Lewis Dunk featured highly as he dished out the plaudits.
Making the trip to Craven Cottage for the game, Brighton took a two one victory with a penalty from Tomer Hemed and a Dunk goal 60 seconds later, but we did have to come from behind in the game so spirit was high on the agenda for the manager as he spoke to the media in his post game press conference.
The Official Site have him saying about the late comeback that he felt it was nothing less than our overall performance had deserved.
Picking out Dunk for his display, Hughton was quick to say it was about his performance levels throughout and not just that 90 minutes as well that had pleased him.
‘It wasn`t just about today, he`s been excellent for us all season and we all need him to continue playing like that. He`s got a very good partnership with Shane Duffy and we`ve got two centre-halves that are really pushing to get into this side as well. I thought he was very good today.’
Breaking with tradition it seems, Hughton also had strong words of praise for the performance of match day referee Stuart Attwell for his handling of the game – especially the decision to play advantage prior to then awarding us the second half penalty.
‘There were a few contentious decisions in the game. This was a tougher game to referee, with a lot of calls and a lot of tough decisions. How many he`s got right, I don`t know because I`ve not seen any of them again, but I would applaud him on the penalty. I think the initial challenge outside box was a foul – and we were appealing for a free kick – but the ref allowed the play to go on because we were in possession.’
As for the comeback itself, Hughton also had words of praise for the determination of the players to stick with it following the setback of going a goal behind early on in the second period.
‘We`ve certainly showed we can do that, as we did at Birmingham. I thought in that first half we needed to keep the ball better, because they were good and in the periods where we had the ball, we needed to take the pressure off a bit and we didn`t. But we are able to turn things around at the moment in what is a very competitive league.’
