No Man’s Land is the name that is given to the area between the front lines of opposing armies, particularly at drawn out conflicts such as the Battle of the Somme in the First World War. Barren, desolate, and absent of cover, it was an exceedingly dangerous area. Neither side possessed it, and nobody wanted to be sent across it.
The term can also be more widely used, such as to describe the vague and shifting parts of the political arena not covered by any one party. It can also be used in football.
No Man’s Land is where Brighton are.
As can be seen above (if you ignore Brighton), the Premier League’s relegation battle has effectively become its own group. It is separated by seven points (which is colossal, given that none of the bottom four teams have that in total) from the rest of the league. This fairly reflects event on the field, where West Brom, Burnley, Fulham and Sheffield United are all utterly atrocious. Burnley and Sheffield can’t score, Fulham can’t keep it out, and West Brom struggle to do either – almost half of their goals came in one game against Chelsea.
Brighton’s performances, meanwhile, have been consistently excellent. They should be comfortably mid table, but are instead only a bad couple of results away from the relegation dogfight. Why? Because on the field they are also in a sort of footballing No Man’s Land. They’re solid at the back, but don’t keep many clean sheets. They play attacking football, but don’t score as many goals as they should.
Sometimes they get it right, such as when they thrashed Newcastle 3-0 at St James’ Park in September.
More often though, a combination of bad luck and utterly profligate finishing sees them drop points. No game better illustrates these tendencies than their logic-defying 3-2 defeat to Manchester United, where they outshot their opponents 18-7, hit the woodwork five times, and then saw a penalty awarded against them by VAR after the full time whistle had been blown. Bruno Fernandez dispatched it, and Brighton got nothing.
The story was similar when drawing 0-0 with Burnley (19 shots to 4) and 1-1 with Crystal Palace – who scored with their only shot (Brighton took twenty). Add these four dropped points to their total and Brighton would sit twelfth in the table. Add the three stolen by Manchester United also, and they are fifth.
Except they’re not. They’re sixteenth. They’re sixteenth because they don’t take their chances and don’t seem inclined to start doing so. Until they develop a ruthless streak, Brighton will continue to struggle to pick up actual results. They will continue to struggle to climb the table. They will continue to teeter just on the edge of the relegation battle.
They will remain in No Man’s Land.
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