Hughton praises Albion’s character
Brighton manager Chris Hughton hailed his side’s ‘great character’ to win 2-1 away to Crystal Palace on Saturday and says the referee was right not to send Anthony Knockaert off.
On his side’s performance, Hughton said: “For where we are at this moment and the group of teams around us where everybody’s capable of winning games, it’s really important to build on last week. I thought it was a big three points for us last week and important that we built on that.
“We had to defend well and as a team, the team shape we defended really well but also individually. With the players they’ve got and the areas they get into I thought we did really well. In the 90 minutes there wasn’t, for both teams, the clear chance.
“It was going to be the team that pulled something out of the bag, the little bit of quality or the penalty in their case, and fortunately for us we had that little bit of quality.”
On the Knockaert foul in the first minute, Hughton said: “You had two players that equally went for the ball, so my first impression was neither was going to get booked.
“Then I think what was deemed was Anthony’s foot was raised slightly, a little bit more, so I thought the right decision was the yellow card.”
Hughton admitted he would have been happy with a point before Knockaert’s winner and said: “If you’d offered me a draw at 1-1 I would have taken it. We’re the away team and, there might be a group of a few teams that think differently but I think there’s a bigger group.
“They’ve got a penalty so early in the second half, the ascendancy was all theirs and at that moment there would have been more people that would have thought that Palace would have gone on and won it than us. The team showed great character after that and it’s a big win for us.”