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Leicester ?disgust? furious Adams

Leicester City 0 - Brighton and Hove Albion 1

Tuesday 31 August 2004 00:00 BST
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Micky Adams branded his players' performance against Brighton "disgusting" and the worst he had witnessed in an eight-year managerial career.

Micky Adams branded his players' performance against Brighton "disgusting" and the worst he had witnessed in an eight-year managerial career.

The Leicester City manager was left perplexed and then furious after the Foxes were beaten 1-0 by the Seagulls, whose emergency striker Adam Virgo scored the only goal of the game in the first half.

In the 41st minute and against the run of play, Cullip launched the ball forward and while Leicester appealed in vain for offside against Leon Knight out on the left wing, Virgo burst from midfield to take maximum advantage of the Foxes confusion and bury a fine finish low past Ian Walker's outstretched right hand.

Their latest setback left City, who had opened their 2004-05 campaign with high hopes of securing an immediate return to the Premiership, with one Championship victory and two draws so far. Adams, whose side trudged off the field to a crescendo of boos, railed: "I'm disgusted. One or two of my players were average and the rest were very poor. That display was as poor a performance as I've ever been involved with as a manager. That was not a Micky Adams team out there, that's not the way I want to play.

"I don't want to take anything away from Brighton though because they worked as hard as any team I've ever seen. They're a good bunch of professionals and that's what I'm trying to get here."

But his Brighton counterpart Mark McGhee was keen for his team to avoid being typecast as a side full of perspiration rather than inspiration.

"I do not want to get sucked into saying it was merely a hard-working performance from us," he said. "We put ourselves about, especially in the first half, because Leicester are a physical side with some big lads and you have to compete with that. But we wanted to play some football too so we passed the ball, moved it well and created opportunities.

"That was pleasing because it was something our fans didn't see a lot of last season when we had a different strategy. This year though, we're determined to play more football and we're getting better at it too."

But despite their low-key start to the season, the former Leicester manager McGhee is convinced the Foxes will soon begin living up to their billing as favourites for promotion.

Leicester City: Walker; Canero, Dabizas (Wilcox 58), Heath, Tiatto (Blake 66), Scowcroft, Nalis, Gudjonsson (Gillespie 46), Stewart, Dublin, Connolly. Substitutes not used: Keown, Benjamin.

Brighton and Hove Albion: Kuipers; El-Abd, Cullip, Butters, Hinshelwood, Mayo, Currie (Jones, 83), Nicolas, Hammond, Knight (Hart 74), Virgo (Molango, 90). Substitutes not used: May (gk), Jarrett.

Referee: K Hill (Herts).

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