Sussex World reporters Jacob Panons and Sam Morton chat about Brighton and Hove Albion's 3-1 victory over Newcastle United and Gareth Southgate's most recent England squad.
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00:00 So I've got sports reporter Sam Morton with me here and we're going to be speaking a bit
00:07 more about Gareth Southgate's squad for the England games as well as their upcoming fixture
00:12 against Ukraine. So obviously Sam, the main person we're looking at is Lewis Dunk, isn't
00:17 it? Yeah, no, it's great to see him back in the England squad. It's a long time coming.
00:21 Obviously it was a shame that he obviously picked up the injury last time he was picked
00:25 in the team but now finally he should really get a good chance to impress and as I say
00:30 a long time coming because he's been incredible for Brighton for so many years now and it's
00:37 been crazy that he's been overlooked so many times by Gareth Southgate. So it's great that
00:42 he's finally got that recognition and I really hope that he takes the chance to impress and
00:46 he gets the opportunity to do so. I think he will obviously with John Stone's injury.
00:50 You would like to think that he would start with Harry Maguire not being a starter for
00:55 Man United at the moment. You would hope that he wouldn't go straight into the starting
00:59 eleven for England and Lewis Dunk would be one of the first names on the team sheet.
01:02 Yeah, well that was one thing I was going to ask you. Do we think he's going to start?
01:06 I think it was Jamie Carragher towards the end of last season said he doesn't see a better
01:10 English out and out centre back in the league than Lewis Dunk and we were talking about
01:13 it a bit before Tyrone Mings isn't in the squad, I think Stones isn't in the squad.
01:17 It's kind of Tamori, Maguire, maybe Walker and then Lewis Dunk and you're thinking out
01:22 of those lot probably Dunk is the best out and out centre back there.
01:25 100% yeah. He plays every week for Brighton unless he's injured really and he's got that
01:30 kind of experience of playing in a team that likes to play with the ball, dominates the
01:33 ball and takes the game to the opposition. So I think he's kind of perfect for the games
01:38 against Ukraine and Scotland really. He can really slot in well into that role and if
01:44 Southgate wants his players to be comfortable on the ball, I think he's the perfect option
01:49 in all honesty. He's got that kind of experience of playing under De Serbie and can maybe bring
01:54 a bit of that into the England squad as well. So I think he's only positives all round and
01:58 I think he has to start both of those games I think.
02:01 Yeah, well I agree. I think if I was Gareth Southgate I'd be starting Dunk in both those
02:04 games but I wonder if Southgate will be quite apprehensive considering that Dunk hasn't
02:09 played that much for England, hasn't played with those players, might not be completely
02:12 comfortable although I think he's the right player. But I mean, talking about Gareth Southgate,
02:16 his squad selection raised a few eyebrows across the country. What were your thoughts
02:20 on some of the players he selected there?
02:21 Yeah, a few strange ones. I think Southgate admitted himself that he had to go with players
02:27 that were fit I guess. It is strange when you have players like Maguire, Calvin Phillips
02:34 when they just don't get a look in for their clubs. It is strange to see them go straight
02:40 into the national team squad and I think we've obviously seen that Southgate does have his
02:44 favourites and he does like to pick the same players going into tournaments. He almost
02:47 treats it like a club himself really, he knows who his favourite line-up is, he likes to
02:51 stick to that. So it does leave players like Soli March and Lurch a little bit. I think
02:58 it's difficult for players like that to even get a look in because he kind of has his tried
03:02 and tested players that he does like to stick with. It is strange I think obviously with
03:06 Harry Maguire he's even further down the pecking order at Man United now than he was before.
03:10 The same with Calvin Phillips, doesn't really get a look in at City but yeah, still picked
03:14 for England. Obviously you're wishing the best, you hope they do well for the team but
03:18 yeah just disappointed for some players that are missing out as a result really.
03:22 Yeah, I guess it's quite frustrating because the centre-back position is one where obviously
03:26 and the holding midfielder position where England haven't necessarily got an abundance
03:30 of talent there. If you're looking for example wingers, there's players like James Ward-Prowse
03:34 who could play wide, Jared Bowen, Soli March for example and it's a bit harder in those
03:38 positions because there's more depth with Bukaya Sakho for example, Foden, Grealish
03:42 and players like that. But if you were a young player trying to play for England and you
03:46 saw Southgate maybe snubbing those options to bring in players like Calvin Phillips and
03:50 Maguire who I don't think have started a game this season, how would you feel if you were
03:54 a player trying to get in?
03:55 Yeah, a bit demoralising. A bit demoralising isn't it? It kind of makes you think what
03:58 do you have to do, what extremes do you have to go to to get into the England squad really.
04:04 But yeah, I think as you mentioned he probably is lacking in options in those positions maybe
04:09 and you can maybe see that as a reason why. But you mentioned James Ward-Prowse, I think
04:14 he is very unfortunate not to get in the team. I know he's not exactly the same kind of position
04:18 as Phillips but I would quite like to have seen him get an option, set-piece specialist
04:24 and kind of perfect for that. Kind of last minute maybe three kicks if he had one. So
04:30 I've always thought that and I think Jared Bowen is obviously very unlucky as well not
04:33 to get in the squad with the form that he's in. He had two goals in the month just gone.
04:39 He's in great form so it's a shame that he's not there. But yeah, as you say it's difficult
04:43 for players to get in when Southgate obviously does have the players he trusts and he goes
04:47 back to when it comes to picking his teams.
04:51 I guess it's difficult because you want to have the same players, you want that cohesion
04:54 and you kind of want to treat it like a club because if you're always moving it around
04:57 then it's not going to really work. But at the same time, Rio Ferdinand said this earlier
05:01 in the week, Maguire and Phillips, they've just warmed up this season. That's pretty
05:04 much all they've done is run up and down the touchline warming up and they've got into
05:07 the England squad and you've got players like Bowen who scored three goals already this
05:10 season in four games. Ward-Prouse, I think he's got three assists in a goal and yeah,
05:15 it's not great. And just quickly, what would you give your score prediction for the Ukraine
05:19 game?
05:20 The Ukraine game, I'd say 4-1 to England. I think 4-1. Yeah, I think it might concede
05:25 one but yeah, I think they'll grab a few goals.
05:28 Perfect. So thank you for tuning into part one of Latest TV News. Make sure you tune
05:32 in later as we will be discussing Brighton's emphatic 3-1 victory over Newcastle United.
05:45 Welcome back to Latest TV News. I've got Sam Morton with me here and we're going to be
05:49 talking a bit more about Brighton's emphatic 3-1 victory over Newcastle United. And Sam,
05:54 obviously Newcastle were in the Champions League, almost seen as a rival to Brighton
05:58 in terms of their recent success and Brighton came out 3-1 victors.
06:01 Yeah, as you say, an emphatic victory. Just the better team all the game really, just
06:08 completely were back to their best. I think obviously they had a difficult game against
06:12 West Ham where they were hit on a counter-attack but they really did learn from those kind
06:17 of mistakes. I think apart from a couple of dodgy moments at the beginning of the game
06:20 when Newcastle could have scored, I think through Isak had a couple of good chances.
06:26 But from then on Brighton really took control and were clinical. We really saw that with
06:31 Evan Ferguson grabbing his first career hat-trick. The youngest player since Michael Owen to
06:36 do that in the Premier League. So it's incredible and just kind of capped off an amazing week
06:41 for Brighton really with the Europa League draw, signing Ante Fati from Barcelona and
06:46 then beating Newcastle 3-1 in your teenage star scoring hat-tricks. It was the perfect
06:51 week for Brighton really and it's been a great start to the season all round. Obviously apart
06:54 from West Ham and Blip as such but I think they've bounced back well from that.
06:58 Yeah, I was going to say with West Ham obviously a team that didn't really want the ball, wanted
07:01 Brighton to play and frustrated them. Newcastle wanted to do that from the start. We were
07:05 both at the game, we could see that from the start it felt like Fabien Char, Dan Byrne,
07:09 Nick Pope, they wanted to frustrate the Brighton players. They wanted to waste a little bit
07:14 of time, take their time with throw-ins, corners, with goal kicks and stuff and then obviously
07:17 Brighton scored that goal and it kind of shook up that plan. But it must be quite a relief
07:21 for Brighton fans to see that Roberto Di Zerbi has almost learnt how to make the most of
07:25 playing against a team who wants to frustrate you and wants to leave you with the ball.
07:28 Well absolutely, I think Newcastle obviously came into the game a bit out of form. Obviously
07:31 they had a really tough start to the season. They had a great win against Villa and then
07:36 obviously defeats against Man City and the pretty terrible defeat against Liverpool in
07:41 the circumstances that happened. So they didn't come into the game in the best of form and
07:45 Brighton probably knew that. They obviously wanted to bounce back as well. But I think
07:49 Brighton really, as they showed last season when they had the bad defeat against Everton,
07:53 they bounced back brilliantly against Arsenal. They've just got a habit of doing that, just
07:57 really trying to prove to everyone again how good they can be and that the previous game
08:01 wasn't themselves really, it wasn't them as they should be. And once again they were back
08:07 at it completely. Every player on the pitch really had a great game.
08:12 And it was great to see. Newcastle, yeah, they struggled to deal with it. They struggled
08:15 to deal with Ferguson and again they gave them far too much time and space. I think
08:19 the first goal obviously was a terrible goal for Newcastle to concede but Ferguson just
08:24 in the right place at the right time to get on the end of the rebound obviously after
08:28 Pope fumbled it. The second goal gave them too much space and time outside the box to
08:32 pick his spot and it was obviously an amazing finish.
08:34 The third one, Fabian, Shah didn't do the best of jobs really trying to block that shot
08:41 and obviously it was kind of a half-hearted little step in front of him and it just ricocheted
08:45 off him and deceived Pope in the net. So yeah, I think Brighton really did take advantage
08:50 of the frailties in Newcastle's team I think and just highlighted their credentials again.
08:55 Yeah, and I thought it was really interesting because I was reading the programme before
08:58 the game and De Zerby said he was actually impressed with Brighton's performance against
09:01 West Ham and I almost agree with him. I think they played almost quite similarly, they just
09:06 didn't take their chances against West Ham and obviously Areola had a fantastic game.
09:10 But we were saying Brighton kind of had three chances, Nick Pope didn't do a whole lot other
09:14 than pick the ball out of the net really and I think that's such a refreshing thing for
09:18 Brighton fans to see that they're taking their chances, they're hitting their xG in something
09:22 that they haven't been doing in seasons gone by.
09:24 Well absolutely yeah, I think in seasons gone by Brighton have been known as the team that
09:29 are just winning the xG every game but struggling to score. I think obviously in Graham Potter's
09:34 era there were games when they would have 20, 25 shots and would only get a goal or
09:39 not even that sometimes and they would often really pay the price for that in the last
09:43 couple of minutes of the game and their points tally wouldn't quite reflect how positive
09:49 the performances were. So with that being considered I think De Zerby's done an amazing
09:53 job really. I mean obviously it helps that you've got someone like Evan Ferguson up top
09:57 that is as clinical as they come which is incredible for an 18 year old and scary really
10:03 about how good he can be. But yeah just having that kind of focal point and he doesn't even
10:08 start every game if he's not 100% fit. You've got Jal Pedro who obviously hasn't had the
10:14 best of starts you wouldn't say, hasn't been as clinical, I think he's missed a few chances
10:18 but he can only get better I think as well. And obviously you've got Danny Wohlbeck as
10:22 well who's as we all know extremely clinical, really experienced. So really nice kind of
10:28 blended talent there and Brighton have really got that kind of sorted in that sense and
10:33 obviously now we've got Antti Fati to come into the mix as well which is extremely exciting
10:37 and really looking forward to seeing how he gets on.
10:39 And obviously going back to Evan Ferguson, his first career hat trick, extremely young
10:43 player, 18 years old. How do you think he'll be at the club in a year's time?
10:48 It's difficult to see how he would, as we've seen with Brighton, if a player is performing
10:52 at the level of Ferguson we do see that they do move on because the big clubs come calling
10:59 and it's very difficult to say no. But what we have seen with Albion is they do not accept
11:04 anything less than the price they want from them really. They've set a demand and that's
11:09 it. We've seen that with Kai Sedo and they would really not buckle on anything less than
11:13 what they wanted. I think they even got more than what they wanted in the end. So I think
11:18 absolutely it's likely, I think De Serbi admitted in his press conference that it's
11:23 normal for Brighton to sell their top players and what's important is they replace them
11:27 and we've seen that time and time again. I think obviously Ferguson might be difficult
11:32 to replace, I think he's got that kind of eye for goal that we don't often see. I think
11:37 strikers like that are hard to come by. So I think out of everyone that's left he could
11:40 potentially be the hardest to replace. As we've seen over the years, strikers like that
11:46 are so few and far between. And at the age he is, it's something incredible really. I
11:51 think the sky is the limit for him. If he can keep developing, keep going at the rate
11:56 that he's going, he can be anything he wants. I think De Serbi said himself he could be
12:00 one of the top scorers in Europe and I absolutely agree with that. I think he could really get
12:04 to those levels. I think De Serbi compared him to Cristiano Varese, the Italian legend
12:10 of the scorer. Obviously there's been talk of Alan Shearer as well, you never know. I
12:15 mean obviously Haaland's breaking all kinds of records at the moment. But who says Ferguson
12:20 can't hit that in a few years? At 18 years old it's amazing really what he's doing.
12:25 Yeah he looks like a fantastic player doesn't he? When we were watching him I was thinking
12:29 in my head all these scenarios working through and I thought he's scored I think 10 Premier
12:33 League goals in 24 Premier League games, he hasn't started a majority of those. It's quite
12:37 scary if you think if you put him into Man City's squad or a team like that who are providing
12:40 that service, he could easily get about 30 goals a season if he stayed fit. He's such
12:47 a well-rounded player. We spoke about his goals, great reaction time, great positioning
12:52 for the first goal against Newcastle. Second goal, they kind of stepped back and went 'go
12:55 on then, have a shot' and he just curled it into the bottom corner like he was three yards
12:59 out. He just so effortlessly bent it round into the corner, made it look easy from distance.
13:05 And then for the third goal he managed to get a shut off when he was quite in a tight
13:07 position and it sort of shows his versatility. We've obviously seen he's so powerful in the
13:11 air and at 18 years old I was watching him thinking 'how am I 24, how am I six years
13:16 older than him?' and he's broke twice my height, twice my width. He's a monster isn't he?
13:21 Yeah it's amazing. I think what James Milner pointed out in his interview after the game
13:25 as well is that he does the ugly side of the game as well. So he isn't just one of those
13:28 kind of luxury players that's hanging around the box and just waiting to get a tap in and
13:34 he's running and he's putting players under pressure and he's doing that kind of side
13:39 of the game that makes life easier for his teammates. And to have that kind of enthusiasm
13:43 and the effort levels on top of the talent, yeah I think he can really be anything he
13:48 wants to be and it's so incredibly exciting. Not just for Brighton but just for the Premier
13:53 League, for football really. Having a player of his talent and long may it continue.
14:00 Yeah I'm definitely excited to see how it goes and see how his Premier League and international
14:04 career goes. In terms of next year, are there any teams you can see maybe having a look
14:08 at him and how much do you think they might want to get him for him? How much do you think
14:11 Brighton are going to want to sell him for?
14:13 I think well if Kai Seder was going for £120, I think Ferguson would be at least that I
14:19 think, at least that and more. I think there's been talk of him potentially being £200 million
14:23 but we'll see how that goes. But I think in terms of clubs that may want him, I think
14:28 take your pick really. There are so many clubs that are in need of a striker. I think obviously
14:33 Arsenal could potentially have him. I think he'd be probably perfect for them and could
14:39 fit into their front line pretty seamlessly. Same with Man United, I think he's a Man United
14:45 fan growing up. I think Man United fans are definitely really keen for him, if he was
14:49 to move on, for him to go there. I think they would snap it up if they had the chance, really
14:55 if they had the funds to do so. But I think any team, any team in the Premier League and
15:00 we've seen Real Madrid sign Jude Bellingham, you never know, he could potentially go to
15:04 someone like that. We've seen how many goals Bellingham's scored, I think I couldn't put
15:09 that past Ferguson to be honest. So I think not just the Premier League, I think teams
15:12 all over Europe will be looking to sign Ferguson if the opportunity came. But I really hope
15:19 that Ferguson stays at Brighton, at least until the end of the season, which I think
15:22 he will. He's obviously got a contract until 2028 so that's so important for Brighton to
15:28 tie him down until then and get the most amount of money as possible when the time comes.
15:32 Yeah, definitely. I'm hoping he'll stay there for a little while because I think De Zerbe
15:35 is a fantastic coach, seems to be a great set-up at Brighton. We've seen players in
15:39 the past, quite young, showing a lot of potential and they move maybe a bit prematurely or move
15:44 to not the right set-up and things don't work out for them. On the topic of young talent,
15:48 Brighton have signed Ansu Fati from Barcelona. I believe he's the youngest goalscorer in
15:53 Barcelona's history and the youngest goalscorer in Spain's national team history. How surreal
15:57 is it that they've secured his services? Absolutely crazy, really. I think the night
16:01 it was announced it just almost came out of nowhere. You didn't see it coming. I think
16:04 we were talking last week about potential players that Brighton might sign to replace
16:08 Julio Enciso, who's obviously out with a serious injury. No-one in anyone's wildest
16:14 dreams would expect that Ansu Fati would be the man to do that. It's difficult to see
16:19 how he might even start. That's the crazy thing of it. Brighton are doing so well.
16:23 Fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you so much for tuning in to latest TV news. If you'd like
16:27 to read more stories from across the county, please make sure to visit Sussex World online.
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