Fabian Hurzeler has confirmed that Matt O’Riley requires surgery on the ankle injury he picked up in a horror tackle from Crawley Town captain Jay Williams.
O’Riley was only six minutes into his Albion debut when Williams came flying in recklessly from behind. Whilst the £25 million signing from Celtic had to be helped from the field, referee Alex Chilowicz somehow concluded the challenge not worthy of a card.
If ever there was an example of why VAR is a good thing, this was it. Williams would never have attempted, nor got away with such a challenge with an official watching back at Stockley Park.
To make matters worse, Williams looked very pleased with himself after inflicting injury on O’Riley. He even had the nerve to wink, suggesting the foul was pre-meditated.
As an aside, Williams picked up an impressive 16 yellows and one red card from 44 appearances last season. In 2022-24, his record at Banbury in National League North was an even more astonishing six yellows and two reds in 10 matches. The man is clearly unhinged.
The assault from Williams on O’Riley at the start of Brighton 4-0 Crawley was the first in a series of incidents which could feature on a revival of Crimewatch.
Crawley had clearly decided that their best hope of getting a result was to kick Brighton off the park, rather than try and play the surprisingly good football which saw them promoted from League Two via the playoffs last season.
Julio Enciso tangled with a couple of Crawley players. Carlos Baleba came in for rough treatment. And the final few minutes saw Jack Roles shown a straight red card for going through Yasin Ayari.
Hurzeler was livid afterwards, saying: “It’s not part of football, to be honest. You can’t tackle like this. It’s a tackle where you take a risk of injuring another player and I think because a red card was not given the emotions get higher and higher and it’s gets very tough, very tense because the ref didn’t stop it in the first second.”
Crawley boss Scott Lindsey apologised for the tackle. Which obviously makes everything alright, because sorry mends the broken bones of a new signing made only 24 hours earlier.
“We didn’t mean to be aggressive. I would like to apologise if we kicked any of their players. I know the one from Jay Williams where O’Riley came off we didn’t want that and maybe the referee missed that.”
“On second watch I think maybe something should have been done about that. I wouldn’t want any of their players to be hurt. As a leader of my group of men I apologise for that.”
No time frame has been put on O’Riley’s return, although presuming it is a simple fracture he is likely to face at least six weeks out. Anything worse and it could be months before he makes his Premier League bow.
Injury to O’Riley will therefore have a knock-on effect on what the Albion do before the summer transfer window slams shut.
The signing of the Danish midfielder was expected to free up Billy Gilmour to complete his long-rumoured move to Napoli.
Gilmour may now find himself remaining at the Amex until at least January with Brighton looking a little light through the middle of the park again.
