Crystal Palace escape icy tendrils of The Drift, but it has oblivious Brighton captive | OneFootball

This is becoming the season of The Drift.

Teams nobody expected to be in trouble this season have sleepwalked right into it.

In a truly abysmal game of Premier League football at the Amex, Crystal Palace appeared a tiny fraction more aware of the fact The Drift had them in its tendrils and fought a tiny bit harder to escape it. That was enough for a 1-0 win against a Brighton side who don’t yet appear to have understood their own Drift-based assignment.

This victory, Palace’s first in nine Premier League games and 13 in all competitions takes them above Brighton and fellow Drift-succumbers Spurs and goes a long, long way to securing Premier League football for whoever follows Oliver Glasner.

Brighton could yet be in for a nasty shock, though. They are only two points ahead of Spurs, and they are definitely in a relegation fight, and two points behind Newcastle who might not be in relegation trouble but have definitely felt the cold touch of The Drift more than once this season.

If this result and performance doesn’t shock the Seagulls into life, then reality could hit very hard and very fast.

They don’t play another home Premier League game now until March, with distinctly awkward looking trips to Aston Villa and Brentford either side of Liverpool in the FA Cup. Their next game here is Nottingham Forest on March 1, and it could look uncomfortably like a six-pointer by then.

We still think the worst game of Premier League football we’ve seen this season is Brentford 0-0 Spurs because it was genuinely offensive to the entire concept of association football, but we’re confident this game has taken second spot.

There was always a decent chance one goal would be enough here. Brighton haven’t scored twice in a Premier League game since a 2-0 win here over Burnley over a month ago – their only win in their last 12 Drift-adjacent games.

For Palace it remains two months since they scored multiple goals in a Premier League game; what was before today their most recent win in the competition at Fulham on December 7.

Those facts make it all the more remarkable that when Evann Guessand launched a rare Crystal Palace foray on the hour mark, Brighton decided simply not to really defend it all. We’ve watched the goal back four or five times now, and still can’t quite get our heads round how Ismaila Sarr was able to just appear in so much space in such a dangerous position.

Guessand and he completed the formalities in pleasingly clinical style, but the only conclusion we can come up with for how and why it was so easy is this: The Drift. The Drift explains all, and it has Brighton firmly in its clutches.

Of course, the identity of the man to create that goal is significant too. The arrivals of Guessand and Jorgen Strand Larsen were at least the actions of a club that knew it was in trouble. Brighton appear to have a more laissez-faire, more Spurs approach to The Drift and that has to be more worrying.

Strand Larsen looked like exactly what he is, by the way: a very capable striker who has been shorn of his touch and confidence by the trials of his season so far at Wolves, a club not so much caught by The Drift as entirely consumed by it for the first half of the season.

He improved as the game went on and could have made the points safe in the closing moments.

In reality, though, the points were already safe. Brighton were never getting back into this despite bringing on a cast of theoretically likely lads from the bench.

Because at 1-0 down in what they consider a ‘derby’, Brighton’s final attempt on Dean Henderson’s goal came after 65 minutes. There was over half an hour of what we guess could theoretically be described as football played after that moment in which it wasn’t even clear whether Brighton or their supporters in an eerily quiet stadium were even entirely aware they were a goal down.

Palace have, for now, escaped The Drift’s clutches. The worry for Brighton is that they don’t even seem to realise how thoroughly it has them.