Head coach Roberto De Zerbi would not agree but missing out on Europe would benefit Brighton & Hove Albion next season.
That is increasingly likely to be the scenario after Saturday’s 3-0 home defeat by Arsenal stretched their league run to one win in six games.
De Zerbi’s side are 10th in the Premier League, which is low as they have been all season. The finishing position is liable to worsen, not improve, considering five of the remaining seven matches are against teams above them.
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Let us suppose they end up in 12th place. Dropping a couple of positions would cost around £4million in merit prize money. Reaching the last 16 in the Europa League before going out to Roma over two legs was worth around £20million ($25m).
Although failing to qualify for Europe again represents a significant reduction in income, it is not such a big deal financially following the record profit of over £124m made by the club last season, when they overachieved to finish sixth in De Zerbi’s first campaign in charge.
It should also be noted that figure does not include the sales of Moises Caicedo (£115m) and Robert Sanchez (£25m) to Chelsea, which will be in the next financial year to June 2024.
The bigger damage would be to De Zerbi’s ambition and pride. The disappointment of falling away would be softened for the hierarchy and for the majority of fair-minded supporters by knowing a mid-table conclusion while competing in the Europa League for the first time — and topping a tough group including Marseille, Ajax and AEK Athens — in the face of debilitating injuries throughout the campaign is not the end of the world. Not great, but OK in the circumstances.
De Zerbi, on the other hand, would be dissatisfied. He would regard a drop in the league position of six places as unacceptable. His bar-raising demands are that Brighton equip themselves to be top-six challengers, not just top-10 contenders. This strikes at the heart of his doubts about his future, which will only be answered with a positive outcome if he is reassured by the plans for squad strengthening in talks with owner-chairman Tony Bloom.
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Such a demanding approach is a good thing. It inspires everybody to continue to aspire for better, but it also needs to be accompanied by a dose of realism.
De Zerbi said Brighton had “not been ready” for Europe and that “we have not organised everything in the best way” following last month’s 4-0 defeat in the first leg away to Roma.
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He is right, but why would they or he for that matter have really known what to expect? No amount of planning can prepare a club and most of the players for living the experience of playing in Europe for the first time, or indeed the coach for a different experience to the one he briefly had at his previous club Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League in 2021-22.
They finished bottom with no wins in a group containing Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Moldova’s Sheriff Tiraspol before De Zerbi’s stay was curtailed by Ukraine’s war with Russia. The 14-time champions of Ukraine have competed in the Champions League every season since 2000-01. They were also semi-finalists in the Europa League in 2016 and 2020.
It is not just about the gap in European experience between Shakhtar and Brighton. The domestic context for both clubs is contrasting as well. The Premier League in Ukraine is not as competitive or demanding as the Premier League in England (16 clubs play 30 matches compared to 20 teams playing 38 games, which are generally of higher quality and intensity).
This season has been a learning process for Brighton and De Zerbi and it will stand both of them in good stead. They have had to cope with factors such as the physical and mental toll of playing in Europe. And then there has been the emotional element at a club where it has been such a big deal because of the journey they have been on since they were almost relegated from the English Football League in 1997 and were then without a permanent home for the next 13 years.
The average points per match from games played on the weekend immediately after a Europa League fixture fell from an overall average of nearly 1.4 to 1.28 (the defeat at Liverpool at the end of last month has been discounted in the figures due to a gap of 17 days).
Although the Arsenal defeat was the first at the Amex Stadium in the league since August, De Zerbi has often referred to the cost of dropping points in home draws his side should have won, against Fulham, Sheffield United and Burnley. Each of those games in October, November and December fell in the thick of progressing from the group into the knockout stages of the Europa League.
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The squad has lacked ready-made depth to cope week in, week out with a damaging succession of injuries. De Zerbi has not been able to rest key figures such as captain Lewis Dunk and Pascal Gross, both of whom have also been on international duty with England and Germany.
Instead, in other aspects of the team, De Zerbi has arguably rotated too much — nearly four changes per game on average in the league — which is destabilising, particularly for defensive cohesion.
Changing the goalkeeper regularly, although well-intentioned for summer signing Bart Verbruggen to grasp as effectively as Jason Steele the clinical detail involved in playing out from the back, has undermined consistency.
That appears to have belatedly come to an end with Verbruggen in goal for the past five matches in succession, a sequence launched for the Dutch international in the 1-0 home win in the second leg against Roma.
Nobody could have catered for the number of players De Zerbi has regularly been without due to injuries throughout the campaign, especially influential attackers. It should not be that surprising that only three goals have been scored in the past eight games without wingers Kaoru Mitoma and Solly March and with top scorer Joao Pedro only returning from two months out with hamstring trouble in the seventh of those matches.
The impact of March’s absence has tended to be overlooked because it was so long ago (he was ruled out for the season by serious knee damage suffered at Manchester City in October). Mitoma, ruled out in February for the rest of the season by a back injury, has been restricted to 26 appearances, having been affected previously by an ankle injury and involvement with Japan in the Asia Cup.
That may put off potential summer suitors. Although it cannot be ruled out, Brighton are less vulnerable this time to losing a big player, or players to big clubs, than they have been across the previous three summers — Ben White, Yves Bissouma, Marc Cucurella, Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister have been sold over that period to Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and Liverpool.
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Aside from Mitoma, Joao Pedro may attract attention as well, although 10 of his 19 goals have been penalties (albeit converting them is an art in itself).
De Zerbi said after the Arsenal defeat: “The challenge next season is to compete like last season, because last season in the first XI we were better. But we lost Caicedo, Mac Allister and (Levi) Colwill (on loan from Chelsea). And now we are working a lot, maybe harder than last season, but we are not at the same level yet.”
Europe has been an enjoyable but consuming distraction for everybody. A season without it and another season with each other at this stage of the club’s development would be good for Brighton and for De Zerbi.
(Top photo: Giuseppe Maffia/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
