Hughton hails Brighton’s hard work and goal threat

Brighton boss Chris Hughton said his side’s work ethic, resilience and goalscoring ability were behind their 5-0 thrashing of Fulham.

A Tomer Hemed hat-trick and goals from Bruno Saltor and Anthony Knockaert swept aside the Whites and maintained Brighton’s promotion challenge.

Hughton said, with just four league games to play, he was beginning to see in his squad all the hallmarks of a successful Championship side.

He said: “You’ve got to have a motivated team, you’ve got to have a team that’s hard to beat and you’ve got to have a team that can win games in different ways.

“Look at Burnley – they can score goals, they can win ugly, they can score from set plays and they’ve got a strong reslience in the team. And I think you’ve got to have all of them.

“For a little while now we’ve been able to score goals. We’ve had big chunks of the season where that’s not been the case.

“You’ve also got to have that strong work ethic to the team and fortunately we’ve got that.”

Hughton admitted his side were sluggish in the opening 20 minutes against Fulham, giving the ball away too often, but improved after Hemed’s penalty gave them the lead.

He said: “Goals change games and I thought from the moment that we scored – and in particular the second goal – I thought we looked very good.”