Brighton Fan View: Jurgen Locadia must be the first of many January arrivals

Jurgen Locadia’s arrival is extremely pleasing but Brighton’s need for new additions has grown rather than decreased after signing the Dutchman.

We all said Brighton needed to sign a striker in the January transfer window. We should have added the caveat of ‘a fit striker’, with the Dutchman currently sidelined by injury and not available until next month. However, well done to the club on bringing in someone who looks like he will be a good addition.

My belief all along was that we needed two strikers and a central midfielder to bolster a threadbare squad and that has not changed. The need for the midfielder is even greater with Steve Sidwell ruled out for the season and, in addition, Chris Hughton has said he wants to replace Izzy Brown after the young attacker returned to Chelsea following a season-ending injury.

Yesterday’s loss to an Eden Hazard-inspired Chelsea highlighted the fact that we should really be looking to add a central defender and possibly a left-back to our wishlist as well. Shane Duffy had a great start to the season but he has been out of form for weeks and yesterday I thought he was incredibly poor. The Irishman needs to come out of the firing line. In addition, Markus Suttner had a poor game, highlighting another weakness in our ranks, although we do have Gaetan Bong as well for that position.

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While raising more questions about us defensively, yesterday’s game was in many respects encouraging for Brighton fans. In between being 2-0 down by the sixth minute and conceding a third goal 13 minutes from time – followed by a fourth – Brighton were very good. We should have had one stonewall penalty, I believe we should have had a second, Tomer Hemed was denied by a fantastic save, Davy Propper hit a post and Ezequiel Schelotto created a great chance for himself to score before Chelsea’s late double. That is five clear chances for us – many more than I expected.

A couple of Chelsea fans on the train afterwards were saying Brighton were poor. I disagree totally. It was poor defending for three of the four goals, but a 4-0 scoreline masked a few of Chelsea’s own shortcomings because without Eden Hazard – a player probably worth three times our entire squad put together – the outcome would have been very different.

Chris Hughton changed the formation to go with three centre-backs and two full-backs pushing on, one of which failed to do so. I didn’t like the formation and felt it didn’t work, but I have been calling for something to change so I am not going to criticise Chris Hughton for changing something. My preference remains for a change back to last season’s 4-4-2 formation and I felt Sam Baldock could have been introduced as a second striker as we chased a way back into the game.

However, in fairness to Hughton and the formation he went for, if we had been given either of the two penalties or had a bit more luck elsewhere on the day, we could have been looking at a draw at least and then there would be no questions of the team selection.

Hughton was carefully critical of the referee after the game, righty so, and mentioned the man in the middle’s positioning which did not give him a great view of the first penalty. VAR would have given the penalty, but what about the linesman who had a perfect view but did what all linesman do these days which is fail to make a decision on anything.

But let’s stay positive. Seeing Chelsea wasting time and trying to slow the game down at every opportunity at 2-0 up – something which does not come across on Match of the Day – was encouraging. So too was large parts of our performance and so too is the arrival of Locadia. But we do need a few more before the window closes.

@GriggoHome