Brighton & Hove Albion manager Dario Vidošić was arguably the more frustrated of the two managers throughout his side’s meeting with Crystal Palace, despite scraping a 1-0 victory over the Eagles at VBS Community Stadium.
It was a far cry from the composed demeanour seen in the first three weeks of his tenure as Vidošić expressed “I thought we were well below with a lot of careless turnovers, a lot of technical sorts of errors that we made. Very simple. We probably didn’t play what was in front of us. The times that we did do it, it was good, we looked like us but I think just an off day I think which is normal as I said to the girls. It’s about now finding how do we get out of those moments quicker.”
The Seagulls manager gave credit to their hosts, expressing “they looked dangerous in transition and we sometimes played into their hands.” More specifically he highlighted that Palace had surprised his side with their chosen formation, as he explained “we anticipated it a little bit different, we didn’t expect the back 5.”
After being the recipient of two yellow cards during last weekend’s clash with Aston Villa, Poppy Pattinson was suspended for their fixture against Crystal Palace. At times, it looked obvious that the Seagulls were missing Pattinson’s depth on the left wing, but Vidošić seemed adamant that although it forced a change, it was not to be responsible for his side’s poor performance.
He said, “we had to change up a little bit. But then again the back five forced us to do that as well. Because now the space was on the outside. Maybe that’s one thing, but I think we still should have been better in how we apply ourselves.”
Brighton eager to get their performances ‘back on our terms’ says Vidošić
When asked how he will reinvigorate his side ready to take on Manchester United next weekend, he acknowledged that it won’t be be anything special, “Just normal processes. We’ll review this game, we’ll watch it back and get everything ready for the girls. We’ll go through everything, how we can improve. Probably stuff that I missed, that might have been really, really good.”
Vidošić was also quick to remind the media that Brighton “have quite a young team so we’ll take a lot from this and also we know in this league that everyone’s a challenge. It’s very hard and there will be times in games where we will suffer where teams will dominate. So it’s about how can we quickly try to wrestle that back, get it back on our terms.”
‘We always want to improve’ says Vidošić
The Halfway Line was keen to hear how the Australian evaluates his side’s start to the season, and Vidošić was reflective when discussing his maiden season in charge. He said, “It’s hard to say. I’ll always probably rank it lower, but you know that’s always how we want to be, better. We always want to improve. So, we’ll always find stuff. I’ve even said to the girls, even if you play the perfect game, I’ll find something so that’s the thing is their development; to improve them, to get them better and if we keep doing that as a team, then we can keep putting on good performances, getting positive results.”
With that said, Vidošić did identify that already in the opening weeks of the season “teams are tweaking.” He continued, So we didn’t expect them to probably play that back five. So that’s the respect that we’re starting to get in the league that teams are adjusting to us, trying to stop what we do. A lot to learn from and exciting times there.”
Vidošić smiled when noting that Brighton will play hosts to the Red Devils at the AMEX next weekend, and urged fans to come and offer their support to the Brighton outfit saying “I think there’s already about 6 ,000-7,000 tickets sold, so we encourage everyone to clear their schedule and come to the Amex and help support us to try and get another 3 points.”
