Brighton boss Graham Potter says 'pain' can help team learn

Potter’s side have lost their last four consecutive matches, scoring one goal in that period since beating Watford 2-0 at Vicarage Road a month ago on February 12.

Albion’s head coach noted that performances have improved since the 3-0 defeat to Burnley which was Brighton’s heaviest of the season.

He added that the Newcastle performance saw Brighton take some “steps in the right direction”.

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Potter said: “It’s about being consistent, analysing what has happened, trying to improve, being honest with the assessment of the games.

“I think the Newcastle performance was actually quite good, certainly in comparison to Burnley and Aston Villa there were steps in the right direction.

“United we were punished from a mistake, Cristiano Ronaldo punishes us with an incredible action and then we’re down to 10 men. So after the game, pretty quickly you’re in a situation where the lens is you have lost four and it’s pretty disappointing, rightly so.

Albion captain Lewis Dunk headed home to give Albion a fighting chance against Newcastle - PA Wire

“Our job is to see this period out, stick together as a group, learn from it. Sometimes as much as we want to win, you need a bit of pain to learn as a team and a club. Then we have to look forward to the game on Saturday which is as good a game as you’re going to get.”

Albion were sucker punched by two quickfire Newcastle goals last weekend which came through Ryan Fraser and Fabian Schär in the space of two minutes.

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Potter added: “We started the game well at St James’ Park up until the first goal. We were attacking quite well and then from the edge of their box they end up scoring.

“Goals change games of football, the lens of the game is we lost so there must be lots of things wrong but if you actually analyse the performance over the 90 minutes, we did lots of things well.”