Brighton held Manchester City to a 1-1 draw at the Etihad Stadium, with Kaoru Mitoma’s goal earning a point and extending Fabian Hurzeler’s impressive Premier League record against Pep Guardiola. The result
kept Hurzeler unbeaten versus City, while also frustrating the team currently second in the table.
Hurzeler now has two wins and two draws from four league meetings with Guardiola’s side, making the German the first manager to avoid defeat in an opening quartet of top-flight clashes with the Spaniard. Hurzeler highlighted the mentality of the squad, which stayed composed after falling behind before half-time.
Mitoma struck on 60 minutes, finishing a swift counter-attack with a low drive into the far corner from the edge of the area, cancelling out Erling Haaland’s first-half penalty. The equaliser was historic, only the second Premier League goal by a Japanese player against City, after Shinji Okazaki scored for Leicester City in May 2017.
Across the match, Mitoma produced Brighton’s most direct threat. The forward attempted a team-high two shots, recorded three touches inside the Manchester City penalty area, and won possession five times, which was a joint-best figure for the visitors. Those contributions underlined Mitoma’s influence in a difficult away fixture.
And Hurzeler believes he can play a key role for the Seagulls in the second half of the season. He can be a game-changer for us, Hurzeler said. We need to push him so he's 100%, but in the second half, he showed he is trying to get back on track as quickly as possible.
Brighton’s coach felt the performance matched the level needed to challenge Manchester City. We started the game really strongly, we created a lot of chances and should have scored at least one goal, Hurzeler said. Then the goal for them came out of nowhere, and that changed the dynamic a little bit.
Hurzeler accepted that Brighton’s own errors helped City after the interval. At the start of the second half, we gave them chances through our own individual errors, but we didn't give up. We always had belief, and after making it 1-1, we had more big chances.
Hurzeler also stressed why a draw felt fair overall. We made too many mistakes to win the game, so that's why we have to be happy with a draw. It was an up-and-down game. But the most important thing was the chances we created. We stuck together as a team and had belief that we could get something from this game.
