Brighton went into Christmas off the back of a defeat against Middlesbrough, the festive period saw a draw at Brentford and then a second successive home defeat against Ipswich on Monday.
Had it not been for David Stockdale on Boxing Day, when the Albion ‘keeper made several fine saves to ensure a point from the nil-nil draw at Griffin Park, defeat would have been suffered again with Chris Hughton praising his contribution telling the Official Website.
‘The one from Tarkowski’s header was about him being in a good position to start with. We certainly needed him to make the saves. I thought that was one of the better ones. The two best chances of the game were that one and when Jamie (Murphy) had a chance to score with a shot from left-hand side. It (keeping a clean sheet) wasn`t the most important thing, which was trying to get a win here.
As for the point itself, it goes without saying he wanted to win but it was important ‘not to lose’ so he took the point.
Hughton added.
‘We wanted to get back to winning ways, but they are a good team and they cause you a lot of problems with their movement and they’ve got a lot of good strikers too. It was important that we got back to a clean sheet and to not lose. I know we’re only on the back of one defeat, but we’ve got to get back to winning ways.’
That ‘back to winning ways’ feeling is something Brighton are still looking for with Ipswich going away from the Amex Stadium with the points after a one-nil win on Monday.
On this game Hughton, in another interview with the Official Website, put it down as being ‘one of those days’ for Brighton.
‘We were up against a very good side in Ipswich and we didn’t start too well. In the second half we probably could not have done any more than we did to try and get back in the game and get a result. It was just one of those days where we wanted things to go for us and we obviously made a mistake for their goal, but I’m angry because a goal that we scored in the first half was disallowed for offside.’
The winning Ipswich goal, scored by Daryl Murphy, came shortly after Brighton had a goal wrongly disallowed for offside with that leaving Hughton frustrated with the Jamie Murphy offside call, which wasn’t the case.
‘It was on the linesman’s side and he was onside. Sometimes linesmen have to make decisions when the player is the furthest away, but when the player is on your side then generally they are the easiest ones to pick up, so we are really disappointed with that.’
January will be a tough window to work in, Hughton knows this from experience, but he’s planning to do all he can to get the business conducted that Brighton want to in order to ensure the first half of the season continues in a positive fashion.
Albion look to get back to winning ways against Wolves on New Years Day, with Hughton finishing by saying.
‘We need to get back to winning ways and the good thing about football is that there is always another game coming around quickly, particularly in this division, so we will need to dust ourselves down and come again strongly on Friday.’
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