Brighton Head Coach, Fabian Hürzeler criticised his team for a “wild” performance in their 4-0 win over Crawley in the second round of 2024-25 Carabao Cup.
Simon Adingra fired Hürzeler’s Seagulls ahead after 31 minutes before second-half goals from Jeremy Sarmiento, Adam Webster and Mark O’Mahony completed a dominant win to continue their unbeaten start to the season.
Hürzeler though wasn’t impressed by the performance despite the flattering scoreline as he criticised the wild play with sloppy passiveness.
“On the one side I’m not really happy about the performance and how the game went.
“I think it was too wild, too many mistakes with the ball, too shy, not enough courage against the ball, too passive, pressing individually. And the second part is you have to win tough games like this which we did.”
The USA-born German however reflected on his own experience of cup games during his time in Germany, and felt that Crawley provided a decent test for his players.
“I experienced a lot of cup games in Germany and I know how difficult it is to play against a team that comes from a lower league. I think they had nothing to lose, they had a lot to win.
“So in the end, we are happy about the result but we will try to keep improving and try to play better than today.”
The victory however was overshadowed by a left-ankle injury to new signing, Matt O’Riley following a sixth minute tackle by Jay Williams, which left Hürzeler annoyed at the lack of a booking and subsequent tackling.
“I think after this foul [on Matt], it was like the players thought they could tackle like they want because he didn’t get a yellow card for this foul. For me it was a clear red card.
“You can’t tackle like this, in my opinion. You can play hard. You can be ruthless. You can be hard in individual duels but you can’t the risk to injure a player and I think in this situation [the tackle] was much too late.”
Hürzeler added that his team now must learn to adapt when come up against similar opposition in future.
“In the end, we have to accept how the opponent play. And of course, it’s not nice if a player is injured, but that was their way of playing and we have to find a way to deal with it, and that’s something where we have to take responsibility on our own.
“We have to be honest. We have to improve in these things, and I’m sure we will.”
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