Manchester United 4-2 Brighton: Late Bryan Mbeumo intervention puts paid to Seagulls’ hopes of comeback
Manchester United cast aside shadows of bogey team Brighton on Saturday to make it a third successive win for Ruben Amorim. Bryan Mbeumo fired just after the hour to seemingly put the game to bed, before firing again in the 96th minute to really put it to bed, following a late Brighton resurgence that threatened to close the day with an omelette’s worth of eggs on Amorim’s face.
United were bold with six out of seven added minutes gone in the second half, Brighton piling on the pressure with the score at 3-2 and hoping to get that decisive equaliser, when youngster Ayden Heaven piledrove a pass through the midfield, Bruno Fernandes adding a touch of sheen that wasn’t actually a touch, cleverly dummying to let the ball onto Mbeumo’s path. The Cameroonian wisely delayed, and then when Bart Verbruggen came rushing out he whammed it into the top right corner.
United had started the game well, a habit this season, but typically dropped off after the first few minutes. Casemiro was impressive, Matheus Cunha lively. The latter got his first goal for the club with 24 minutes played, after penalty calls from Amad and then Mbeumo had earlier gone unanswered.
In one of United’s searching moves in front of the Seagulls’ penalty area, they flitted passes around quickly, the away side unable to track the ball any more than they could a rat in a maze. It then dropped to Cunha on his preferred edge of the box, the Brazilian taking a touch and then curling a low shot to the extreme bottom right corner.
Ten minutes later another Brazilian doubled United’s lead. Casemiro’s 25-yard effort bounced off Yasin Ayari to completely wrong-foot Verbruggen and enter the net. The Old Trafford faithful were exultant, with United looking like their enemy from that point could only be themselves.
Brighton enjoyed some nice moments. Maxim De Cuyper, Yankuba Minteh and Danny Welbeck asked some uncomfortable questions before Mbeumo fired through Lewis Dunk’s legs to make it 3-0 just after the hour.
Then in the 20-odd minutes after that it was largely Brighton. Substitutions of the impressive Casemiro and Amad Diallo for Kobbie Mainoo and Patrick Dorgu cost United their control of central areas.
First Danny Welbeck’s curling freekick beat Senne Lammens with 15 minutes of normal time, before Charalampos Kostoulas’s header made it 3-2 with six minutes still to go. The tension threatened to boil over but then Mbeumo had the last word.
