The salty air loosening his bun, sweat gathering in his moustache, this was Pascal Struijk’s misfortune to be the latest left-back to represent Leeds United’s struggle to escape being Leeds United on the south coast, against Brighton. Two seasons ago Ezgjan Alioski was hauled off at the half, patience with our right winger running out at left-back and most fans feeling done with him, a game that actually became the springboard for four performances that have some fans still yearning for him now. They yearn because his replacement, Junior Firpo, took that performance and turned it into a stereotype, adding a booking in the first five minutes to give his half-time substitution a verb: to Firpo. We hope we haven’t seen Firpo’s best games at left-back, because we might need him to take over from Struijk, who at least made it to full-time. Or, this is just Leeds in Brighton.

United’s whole day was summed up when Struijk watched his clearance rolling towards his corner flag, and the camera caught his eyeroll when the ball clipped the pole and fell corner side, not throw-in. Typical. He’d already got the early booking, and took a shot in the second half that shrugged its way into the goalie’s arms as if asking why he’d bothered. Was he Alioski bad, did he Firpo? No. And on the other side, Rasmus Kristensen was chasing the players going in behind him after diagonal balls, the new Leeds kryptonite Struijk also had to fight with. But the symbol of the day was Struijk and his ‘fucks sake’ face. Leeds fans know the expression because Leeds fans know Brighton.

I’m quite admiring of Brighton & Hove Albion, almost to the point of jealousy, but ending up in frustration, not only because they stubbornly refuse to let us win, or even score, at their place. Like Leicester, they were company for our historical low in League One, and Ken Bates aside Brighton arguably had it worse. Their old Goldstone Ground had been felled by their chairman for a retail park, and they were hibernating at the Withdean, a hardly converted athletics stadium. Their rise since was phenomenal while Leeds stayed tragic. They were impressive when, after losing in the Championship play-off semi-final in 2016, they tweeted a photo of a busy boardroom and declared ‘Day one of the 2016/17 season’, which ended with promotion. In Leeds at the time, Steve Evans was desperately talking up his chances of winning the title with Leeds, while chairman Massimo Cellino ignored his calls and went looking for someone new. There was some envy, mixed with a little tinpot of pity, when Brighton announced its away end would sell guest ales local to the visitors. We wouldn’t want our club to do that because we’re not nice. But when Leeds fans were being forced to pay an extra fiver ‘pie tax’ as a punishment from our own club’s owner, it seemed objectively good.

Then there is ‘the model’, that Andrea Radrizzani briefly flirted with before settling on Leicester, that this summer earned them £62m by selling Marc Cucurella to Chelsea, £15m immediately going on his replacement, Pervis Estupiñán. Against Leeds, Estupiñán looked more than capable, and we can only gaze and wonder why this lucrative efficiency with left-back sale and purchase eludes our Leeds. The frustration I have with Brighton is their perverse refusal to show the same competence with strikers, to sign some firepower and win the Premier League. Not for their sake, but for ours. On a weekend when Liverpool thumped Bournemouth 9-0, and Manchester City toyed with giving Crystal Palace a two goal headstart before Alfie Haaland’s unreal offspring hit a hat-trick in a 4-2 win, the rest of the division needs the hope that has been absent since Leicester won it in 2016. If Brighton could be the second of our League One peers to win the Premier League, using the buying-selling model our owner wants to work, it might give us hope that Leeds could be the third.

The other advantage Brighton have is their manager, Graham Potter, who made our Jesse Marsch look like the Premier League newbie he currently is. The game worked out like a trap for Marsch. Brighton were better for an hour, not out of United’s reach, but benefiting from laws of pressure suggesting Leeds would be breached eventually. Marsch, a go-ahead guy, decided to “push the game” by bringing on Mateusz Klich and Luis Sinisterra, taking off Marc Roca to leave Tyler Adams defending midfield alone. The change worked: Leeds sprang to action, creating more than they had all game, Klich giving the midfield life, Sinisterra showing Brighton some danger. After Klich pulled off his nonchalant interpretation of gegenpressing to steal the ball, Brenden Aaronson’s frenetic dribble into the box sent the ball scuffing to the back post where Sinisterra, arriving like a train, only smashed himself into the post while the ball went wide. That was Brighton’s big escape, and United’s new forward emphasis was their opportunity. At the other end, Brighton found the Leeds back line and Adams out of order, pulling them into knots while clearing the space for Pascal Gross to shoot and score.

From then on, Marsch was trying to plug a bucket while Potter was filling it. Brighton brought on fresh attackers, so Marsch brought on Adam Forshaw for Jackie Harrison to give Adams help again. Brighton made another double sub, and now Joe Gelhardt came on for Brenden Aaronson, playing somewhere behind Rodrigo instead of up top. Going for the win had left Leeds chasing their own changes to get back into the game, while with the lead Potter had an answer for everything.

It was a frustrating afternoon for Jesse Marsch. There’s no shame in being outwitted by Potter. I’m more serious than I sound when I say Brighton are only a goalscorer away from troubling the top four, and a lot of that is down to him. Marsch is new to the Premier League and learning. But his other opponent was the referee, Michael Salisbury. As a side note it was his dad, Graham, who nearly had his neck squeezed by Max Gradel when his red card threatened our League One promotion match against Bristol Rovers in 2010; he also once denied Leeds three penalties against Brentford, leaving our coach Neil Redfearn feeling like he was “fighting with one arm behind your back”. It was this fruit of Leeds-hating loins, reffing his fifth ever Premier League match, doing as much to constrain United’s hard pressing, hard tackling style as anyone else. Marsch’s style comes with an acronym in German, S.A.R.D., the R standing for ‘reingehen’ or ‘going in’, to attack the ball completely into the tackle, not stop short of an opponent. An occupational hazard of this is a referee like Junior Salisbury who doesn’t like seeing tapped ankles, no matter how innocuous. The fouls and the cards clicked up for Leeds, but more important was the defusing of a core tactic. Marsch tried a trick we’ve seen, and that he’s talked about, engineering a tantrum and goading the ref into booking him as an attempt to shift his mindset. Marsch confirmed afterwards that he was trying to “escalate your behaviour to try to make a point to see if you can affect the way that decisions are getting made.” Salisbury merely booked him as requested and carried on as before.

Marsch’s other post-match comments were about his players, with an accent on ‘freestyling’ against their instructions.

“Our players chose to play out instead of being direct which was the plan. We need to have discipline to stick to the plan of the match. We did it better in the second half. This was a theme of last year when we would build a plan, the match would start and the players would play how they wanted, not sticking to the plan. So, when we do stick to the plan we can manipulate the game more. It’s a learning moment.”

It is a learning moment, but hopefully one lesson will be that we rightly mock Frank Lampard Junior whenever he comes up with some variation of his ‘my plan was right, the players were wrong’ excuse, and this approach never comes across well. Obviously there will be truth in it — plans for eleven people fall apart once one or two don’t follow — and being frank (not Lampard) with the players in private is fine, but the Premier League is not kind to candour. This much information is food for the game’s worst excesses, or to put it another way, I bet this interview gets dissected on TalkSport this week.

Other parts of Leeds United’s anatomy are open to examination after this game, not least how it will have played to the eager new USA market, where Liverpool and Manchester City had their wonder-ball shoved aside so NBC could broadcast Adams and Aaronson’s toil, and Marsch’s strop, to anyone up at 7am on the west coast, 10am on the east, expected a repeat of what Leeds did to Chelsea. Also seen: the opening blows in what’s bound to be a long running struggle with refereeing, a question mark over Leeds’ form away from Elland Road compared to the excellent home start, and with four days of the transfer window remaining, a team visibly suffering without a left-back that could not score a goal. And Brighton, who are now so insufferable that shutting us out at the Falmer feels standard and reduces our upset at this result to weary grimacing, but remain an upwardly mobile example Leeds have been trying, for a decade, to follow. ⬢