Brighton captain Lewis Dunk confessed his side were nowhere near their best despite dumping Liverpool out of the FA Cup on Sunday.
Kauro Mitoma's late winner secured the Seagulls' progression through to the Fifth Round of the competition despite being without star midfielder Moises Caicedo. Harvey Elliott's well-taken strike gave the Reds a first-half lead before Dunk equalised after inadvertently deflecting Tariq Lamptey's effort in.
The home side’s late pressure paid off despite Ibrahima Konate, Fabinho and Andy Robertson all being fortunate to escape red cards for Jurgen Klopp’s team. Mitoma showed remarkable composure to fire home from close range in injury time to win the game.
However, Dunk – who scored his first goal in 10 months – confessed after the game that Roberto De Zerbi’s side were not at their best during the encounter. It was an honest admission that will further hurt the Reds, who were humbled by a three-goal defeat at the stadium in the Premier League a fortnight ago.
“Sometimes you have to win a football game when you are not at your best,” Dunk explained on ITV Sport after the match. “Today we were nowhere near our best. But we ground out the win against a top side.
“They have top players and top strikers who are always going to cause problems. 15 days ago they came here and we were very good against them, so they were always going to come back with extra motivation to beat us. But we had to dig in and fight to show our great character.”
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Dunk added: “We feel like we can beat anyone on our best days, and we have shown today that we can also beat those sides when we are not playing so good. We have the squad now that we can keep pushing on and hopefully we can go further in the competition.
“It is great to have Mitoma on our side, not to have to be chasing him! He has come out of nowhere and we are lucky to have him on our team at the moment. Hopefully, he can keep producing that level of performance.”
Speaking of his levelling strike after Elliott had given Liverpool the lead, Dunk admitted: “Did I mean the goal? Of course not! But I had not scored in a long time so it was a great feeling!”
