A solid but unspectacular performance showed that Mark McGhee is stamping his mark on the team with the style of play and the selection of the players. There was a desire to play the ball to feet rather than hoof it up the pitch as we have seen so much of recently. Watson and Hart were both missing with El-Abd and Piercy given a chance.

First half started slowly with both teams trying to play football but the referee was very fussy as we would see later with some strange decisions and unnecessary bookings. Brighton scored first when Leon Knight turned in a cross off the post. The referee gave Notts County a penalty soon after for something only he saw but which was probably some very innocuous pushing in the box. They scored the penalty with ease hitting it into the bottom left hand corner of the net.

Brighton didn't let it get them down and continued to push forward and Leon Knight was again left free and ahead once again. Come half time it was obvious that without Knight and Carpenter we would have been struggling, but Notts County had very little to offer and were a poor team.

Leon Knight has a couple of good chances in the second half to extend our lead and Yeates came into the game more while the defence coped easily with everything County had to offer.

Amazingly, the ref was booking players for time wasting early in the second half and Piercy got himself sent off for two rash tackles within a couple of minutes.

The last five minutes were played with ten men but the Albion easily held on to complete a satisfactory 2-1 win. There were very few county fans, but better than expected turnout from the Brighton fans.

 Player Ratings for the game

The ratings are out of 10, with 1 being terrible and 10 being brilliant.

Roberts - 7

El-Abd - 6

Cullip - 7

Butters - 7

Mayo - 7

Piercy - 6

Yeates - 7

Carpenter - 8

Knight - 9

McPhee - 6

(Subs)

Pethick - 6

Harding - 6