BRIGHTON, England — Fabian Hürzeler has told Brighton & Hove Albion fans to “enjoy a beer” and not look at the Premier League table to celebrate their dominant 5-0 win over Crystal Palace on Sunday.
The Seagulls maintained their strong start to the season and provisionally moved into second place ahead of Arsenal with a victory in what is sometimes referred to as the M23 derby.
Brighton had five different goalscorers against Palace, with the pick of the strikes coming from Diego Gómez. The Paraguay international scored their second of the game in the seventh minute with an audacious shot from the halfway line.
A Jaydee Canvot own-goal and one from Yasin Ayari either side of Gomez’s moment of brilliance saw Brighton race into a 3-0 lead within 10 minutes. Charalampos Kostoulas and Jack Hinshelwood’s second-half goals added further gloss to a dominant performance.
Despite the Seagulls taking 16 points from a possible 21 so far this season, Hürzeler has urged supporters to not get ahead of themselves.
“They shouldn’t look at the table. They should enjoy the night today without a mobile phone, enjoy a beer or something else and enjoy wearing the Seagulls’ colours,” he said.
“I don’t look at the table at the moment. So of course, positive results, negative results always create judgments, but in the end we need to focus on our performances and that’s the only thing we can control and that’s how we manage it,” he added.
“Since I’ve been here, we always focus on performances no matter if you have a good or a bad run. I think the main reason why we focus on performance is because we want to develop players and we want to develop ourselves as a club.
“And therefore, I think it’s not the right moment to watch the table. The right moment is to watch the game back and try to improve and try to recover well because on Thursday, it’s the next challenge.”
Brighton are in action against Czech side Jablonec in the Conference League on Thursday before a trip to Anfield next weekend to face Liverpool.
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Palace fans might find it easier to avoid looking at the Premier League table after their start to the season. They have taken just seven points from their opening seven games and manager Pierre Sage took responsibility for the manner of their collapse on Sunday against their rivals.
“I don’t know what happened today. I just want to apologise to the fans because it’s not normal to show this face when we are doing this job against this club,” Sage said.
“We are not at the level we expected. And I’m really sorry for that because I know how important it’s for them, but we didn’t show up today. That’s really important for us too. I think we didn’t understand in which context the team was playing.”
