Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Fabian Hurzeler has called for greater consistency from his Brighton players and admitted their fitness levels need improvement despite a spirited second-half performance in a 1-1 home draw against title-chasing Arsenal .
Ironically, the Seagulls have been largely consistent with their recent results, having drawn six of their last eight Premier League games.
But that run hasn’t yielded a league win since late November. And it proved to be a familiar result after Joao Pedro’s penalty just after the hour mark canceled out Ethan Nwaneri’s opener at the Amex Stadium on Saturday.
Despite a good start to the season, Brighton now find themselves falling down the table. They are currently in tenth place.
FT: Another deserved point against Arsenal. 🤝
(1-1) 📲 #BHAARS // #BHAFC 🔵⚪️ pic.twitter.com/Hvip9KAe8l
— Brighton & Hove Albion (@OfficialBHAFC) January 4, 2025
And Hurzeler, the Premier League’s youngest permanent manager at 31, admits he gets frustrated after tackling the same issues every week.
“Yes, I think it should be more,” Hurzeler told Sky Sports after being asked if his side should have taken more than a point against the Gunners.
“I’m standing here after games and I feel like I have to repeat myself all the time and that’s of course a disappointing feeling.
“The big word for us is to be more consistent. Try to play with the identity you want to play for the full 90 minutes and then hopefully get the results we’re hoping for.
“We had to invest a lot to get back (to the game). We came back but then we weren’t clean enough in the last third.
“We had great chances and I think against Arsenal you have to use the momentum to win the game and we couldn’t do that today.”
Improvement march
One area of ​​improvement that the Brighton manager believes can help address the consistency issue is the fitness level of his squad.
But he acknowledges that improving players’ fitness is not a quick fix and it will take time to see any real progress.
Hurzeler said: “(Fitness levels) can be one of the reasons we can’t play consistently for 90 minutes. The game we want to play is intense, the game has to be intense if you want to press high.
“You have to run a lot and at high speed. We are not where we should be but it is a process. We needed for this game to be very physical and at some points we were struggling and we could not maintain this level of physicality for 90 minutes.
“So we’re still working on it and using the training time to make it better.”
Brighton are next in action when they travel to Championship side Norwich City in the FA Cup third round on January 11.
