Brighton lost 2-0 at Anfield on Sunday, and Fabian Hürzeler responded by informing everyone in the stadium that only one team actually tried to win the game. Liverpool scored twice. Brighton managed one shot on target in ninety minutes. Guess which team he meant.
That's sour grapes, and it should be called that.
The numbers Hürzeler leaned on are real, and they still don't rescue him. Brighton did have most of the ball. Liverpool won with their lowest possession in a league victory at Anfield since November 2010. Brighton created the better chances on expected goals, and Yasin Ayari will replay that curling effort off the post in his sleep for a while. None of that is in dispute. What's in dispute is Hürzeler's conclusion: that controlling possession and rattling the woodwork counts as trying to win, while converting your chances into a 2-0 scoreline somehow doesn't.
An own goal from Pascal Groß and a finish from Alexander Isak put Andoni Iraola's side two up inside the first half hour. Liverpool then defended their box and blocked shots while Brighton passed it sideways in front of them. That's a team trying to win a football match and succeeding at it. Hürzeler knows this, because in the same press conference he said it out loud: "The difference was that they scored and we didn't." He praised Liverpool's centre-backs. He admitted his own finishing let him down. He gave the honest answer and the dishonest headline in the same breath, then chose the dishonest one to lead with.
He's pulled this before. Back in March, after a 1-0 loss to Arsenal, he reached for almost the identical line: only one team tried to play football, and he was proud of how his lot did it. Different opponent, same script. Lose a game you thought you should have had something from, then stand up and reframe the result as a moral victory your players earned and the other side didn't deserve. It's narrative management, aimed at his dressing room and at the reporters who'll print it.
It's a bad look on a good manager. Brighton went into Sunday on the back of four straight wins, having put fifteen past people without reply in that run, and it was their first defeat since August. Hürzeler has built something sharp and aggressive. He doesn't need the crutch. Reaching for the referee of your own effort every time the result goes against you is the habit of someone who can't quite stomach being beaten fairly, and the better he gets, the smaller it makes him look.
Any side would sit on a two-goal lead at home. That's true, and it cuts against him: protecting a lead is itself a way of trying to win. Liverpool did the sensible, ruthless thing. Brighton were competitive and unlucky in front of goal. Fine. Say your strikers missed and move on.
Brighton's finishing let Brighton down on Sunday. The scoreboard didn't lie. Liverpool didn't cheat Hürzeler out of anything. He just couldn't bring himself to say the one honest sentence and leave it there.
