After a wildly successful 2022/23 season which saw the seagulls land a place in a European competition for the first time in the club’s history by finishing 6^th in the league table, there was a huge expectation for the team to push on even further and thrive in this year’s premier league season. However, despite a great first half of the season, the south-coast outfit finished a respectable but disappointing 11^th. Here is how the season panned out:

The pre-season summer transfer window was a promising one for Brighton, yet at the same time disappointing. One of the key players in last year’s success, Ecuadorian midfielder Moises Caicedo, had attracted huge interest from the top clubs as a result of his heroics the previous season. Therefore, unsurprisingly, Chealsea came swooping in and netted Brighton a £115million payout for the midfielder, with Chelsea also forking out another £25million to grab the seagulls’ goalkeeper, Robert Sanchez. Argentine midfielder Alexis Macallister also left the club, going to Liverpool for £35million. This influx of money allowed Roberto De Zerbi and the board to splash the cash on what effectively would need to be a rebuild of part of the core of the team. De Zerbi brough in exciting young forward Joao Pedro from Watford for £30million, brought in superstar youngster Ansu Fati on loan from Barcelona, and filled the goalkeeper void with Bart Verbruggen from Anderlecht for £16.3million. Among other comings and goings, the squad looked ready to play brilliant football ahead of the coming season.

The team hit the ground running at the start of the premier league season, winning five of the first six games, including 3-1 victories against Newcastle and Manchester United. After the first six games, Brighton sat in third place in the premier league, their best start ever to a premier league season, and ultimately stirred up excitement among the fans. Although the form didn’t continue quite as exceptionally after the first six games, Brighton certainly impressed as the first few months of the season flew by, with the attack firing on all cylinders courtesy of new signing Joao Pedro and promising Irish youngster Evan Ferguson, who impressed premier league fans everywhere by scoring a hat-trick against Newcastle at the beginning of the campaign. Despite the firepower in attack, the defence was leaky. It took until the 20^th match week for the defence to keep a clean sheet, something that is not ideal even when your attack is delivering the goals. To show the contrast in form between the attack and defence, until Arsenal defeated the seagulls 2-0 at the Emirates in December, Brighton had conceded at least one and scored at least one in each of the first 16 games of the season.

The first half of the season also saw Brighton undertake their first ever European football campaign, as they were drawn in a Europa League group with Ajax (Netherlands), Marseille (France), and AEK Athens (Greece). The campaign started shakily, with the seagulls losing the first game 3-2 at home to Athens, before a 2-2 draw in Marseille. They had it all to do in the final four games of the group, and boy did they deliver. Brighton won all four of the remaining games with a flawless record, scoring six and conceding zero across the four fixtures, including a magnificent 2-0 win in Amsterdam against the Dutch giants Ajax.

At the halfway point of the season, Brighton were comfortably through to the knockout stages of the Europa League, sat in a respectable 8^th place in the premier league, and were ready to begin their FA cup run, although the seagulls were knocked out of the league cup with a 1-0 defeat to Chelsea in the 3^rd round in September. The season was looking promising and Roberto De Zerbis’s side were playing great football.

As we moved into the second half of the season, the January transfer window was a quiet one for Brighton. Five players were brought in, however it seems the board were looking to the future in this window, as not a single player over the age of 20 was brought in. The club brought in five youngsters, one of which being Argentinian wonderkid Valentin Barco from Boca Juniors for £7.8million. Although building for the future is a key part of long-term success, you can’t help but think De Zerbi would have wished for some first team ready players to be scooped up during the January window, especially as an injury crisis began to hit the club. Brighton failed to score in three successive matches in the premier league in January, mostly down to the team playing without any natural wingers during this time, with Kaoru Mitoma, Solly March, Ansu Fati, and Simon Adingra all out injured. The season seemed to be coming to a disastrous halt as not only was the attack running out of steam, but the defence was leaking goals badly during this period. It seems that due to the departure of defensive-midfielder Moises Caicedo in the summer, Brighton were seriously lacking a ball winning midfielder in the team to solidify the centre backs behind, and as a result Brighton conceded 4 goals to newly promoted Luton Town. The lack of first team recruitment in the January transfer window meant that the squad was to be bare for at least a few weeks, and the rest of the season relied on the important players making quick recoveries back to the first team.

Despite the less-than-ideal January in the premier league, Brighton smashed their way past Stoke City and Sheffield United in the Fa cup 3^rd and 4^th rounds respectively, to set themselves up with a 5^th round tie at the end of February away to Wolves.

As the weeks carried on, Brighton slowly saw themselves dropping out of contention for another year in European football. The goals were not flying in like they did in the first half of the season, and the team was still conceding too many goals. They travelled away to Wolves for the FA cup 5^th round tie and were beaten 1-0 by an early Mario Lemina goal after just two minutes. Then, in early march, Brighton were to face Roma (Italy) in the round of 16 for the Europa league, with the first leg being a daunting fixture away in Rome. It then proved to be daunting and more, as Roma put four past a struggling Brighton to win the first leg tie 4-0 and leave Brighton a mountain to climb back at the Amex for the second leg. Then, a week later, Brighton played well and won the return fixture 1-0, however with just the one goal scored, it was not enough to overcome the aggregate difference Roma had built for themselves and ultimately Brighton crashed out of the Europa league in the first knockout round. Despite the elimination, the seagulls should be proud of themselves by making it to the knockout rounds of their debut campaign in European football and can only use it to spur them on for future ventures into the rest of the continent.

The seagulls now found themselves in just one competition after being knocked out of the remaining cups, and could attempt to focus their energy on reviving this premier league campaign. However, it just was not meant to be as they experienced their worst second half to a season since the 2018/19 campaign and really struggled to reach the heights they had soared to at the end of last season. By the time the end of may arrived, Brighton found themselves in 11^th position and some distance away from a European place next year. Disappointing yes, but by no means was this a terrible season for Brighton. The team were riddled with injuries for most of the year, with the seagulls having the fifth-most days lost to injury in the entire league, something that will inevitably hamper the ability to play the football that the manager intends to play. In addition to this, Brighton’s team is young compared to the rest of the league, with even more youngsters being brought in in January to carve a bright future for the South-coast club.

We are yet to see which players come and go from the club in the upcoming transfer window, a window I am sure will be used to both bring in future talent, and reinforce the current first team players to avoid a crisis from happening quite like the one we saw this year. With the announcement of the departure of manager Roberto De Zerbi this summer also, the club will have to look for a suitable replacement that can work with the team De Zerbi has built. Whether or not we will be seeing Brighton and Hover Albion playing a different brand of football is to be seen in August when we kick off the next season, one that Brighton will be eager to attack just as well as they did this year.