Glenn Murray is targeting his 100th goal for Brighton after moving to within one of the milestone with Friday’s match-winner against West Ham.
The 35-year-old striker’s close-range finish represented his 99th goal as a Brighton player and secured a vital 1-0 home victory.
A second almost followed when he headed narrowly over in the second half, and he told his club’s official website: “I’ll be happy to see the 100th goal come and go. I had a couple of half-chances to get the 100th, maybe I should have done better with one, but it wasn’t to be.
“It’ll be a huge achievement to look back on, to get 100 goals for Brighton, but as soon as it’s come and gone, the better, because it will be an extra goal in the tally.
“At my age you don’t take playing in the Premier League for granted.
“So I’m taking a bit of extra time to appreciate where I am; enjoy playing in front of a packed home crowd. It’s not going to last forever, so you have to make the most of it.”
As well as representing the hosts’ first clean sheet of the season, Friday’s fixture ended an encouraging, unbeaten run for West Ham in which they had won three from four.
Their most impressive result had been last week’s 3-1 victory over Manchester United, and winger Robert Snodgrass was critical of their sluggish first-half performance at the Amex.
“In the second half we were miles better, but the way we started the game – and the manager touched on it at half-time – wasn’t at the standard that we’ve set over the last three or four games,” he told West Ham’s official website.
“We had a sticky four games to start off with, but we seem to have turned the corner and one lapse maybe has probably cost us.
“Brighton are a good side, they’re organised and have beaten Man Utd here. They will obviously give a few teams a good game this year, but we need to look at ourselves and you can’t play the first half like that if you want to win games.”
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