The Opposite View

Dean Wilkins spoke to Brighton’s official website yesterday, and was overall happy with a point – as you would be playing away to playoff contenders.

‘In the end that result is a really good point for us,’ he said.

‘We looked a little jaded and the players were not particularly sharp mentally. You get days like that in whatever line of work that you do but we showed great determination, great defensive competitiveness and I thought that they all stuck together and ultimately did a good job.’

In my opinion, the Blackpool side played into Albion`s hands slightly with the poor first half display, and I can certainly understand Wilkins` thoughts as they could have well took all three points with a bit more endeavor and attacking fluidity.
‘I can’t say that I was pleased with the performance. In the first half I felt that we had enough possession and enough situations to have caused more problems than we actually did.’

Wilkins was quoted to have felt that the ball came straight back at the Seagulls too easily, as Alex Revell and Bas Savage struggled to make an impact on the Blackpool back four -which – lets be honest, very few players do!

‘I was very critical of the front two in particular at half time because I didn’t think that they were competitive enough,’ he explained.

I for one thought Bas Savage had a great game, considering the lack of link up from the middle of the park, and was unlucky to be hauled off.

The gaffer stated that ‘Something that we have been working on non-stop over the last two or three weeks is the need to be competing for balls in the air and I just thought that we lacked a competitive edge in that respect.’

Many teams find it difficult to compete against the likes of Barker, Evatt and Burgess but BHA stuck to it, and through sheer determination deserved their point.

‘I think that if we had been a little bit more aggressive and contested the ball with a bit more passion then I think that we could have created more of a threat than we did. In the first period of the game we had the majority of the possession and territory but we didn’t take advantage of it at all.’

‘To be fair to Blackpool, they came out in the second half and changed their shape to combat ours and I felt that the second half was one of those games where you had to constantly be alert because things were changing in the game and you could sense that the game was drifting away from us a little bit. Our quality in possession deserted us at times and in the end it was a case of accepting a point.’