Brighton claims three in a row despite Struijk red
Brighton and Hove Albion earned a third straight Premier League victory as Maxim De Cuyper and Jaouen Hadjam were on target in a 2-0 win at Sunderland despite Pascal Struijk's red card.
De Cuyper opened the scoring after 53 minutes at The Stadium of Light, sliding past Robin Roefs after great work by Pascal Gross.
Struijk was shown a straight red for bringing down Wilson Isidor shortly after, but Hadjam made sure of the points in second-half injury time as Brighton backed up wins over Coventry City and Arsenal.
Brighton had the better openings in a dismal first half, with Diego Gomez denied by one-on-one by Roefs in just the eighth minute after an error from Kevin Danso.
Nordi Mukiele's 30-yard effort was saved low to the left by Bart Verbruggen in Sunderland's only shot on target of the first half.
Struijk's guided header from Gross's free-kick came back off the left post on the stroke of half-time, but the visitors went ahead after 53 minutes.
Gomez's flicked header was picked up by Gross, who slipped in De Cuyper to coolly roll past Roefs into the bottom-left corner.
Just four minutes later, Brighton was down to 10 as Struijk was sent off when referee Thomas Bramall judged his haul on Isidor was a denial of a goalscoring opportunity.
Gross nearly made it 2-0 with an audacious effort from inside his own half after picking Granit Xhaka's pocket, but Roefs was relieved to see it go past the right-hand post.
Brighton did make sure of the win, though, as Georginio Rutter rolled the ball into the path of Hadjam, who drilled his shot past Roefs and into the bottom-right corner.
Brighton boss Fabian Hurzeler was full of praise for his team after the match.
"It was a different performance [to the win over Arsenal] because we had difficult circumstances and faced different adversities," he said.
"It was key for us today to have a really good defensive mindset. I feel it was a deserved win and I have to praise my players.
"They really stuck together, faced adversity no matter how hard it was. They did the basics really well and that is so crucial in a game like this, especially when you are one man down."
For Sunderland, it has now suffered its fourth defeat of the league campaign.
Boss Regis Le Bris said, "It was a disappointing result, to be fair. Think we had several chances in the game. The first half was balanced. It was intense, really tight. We created a few chances, but we lacked quality in the final third."
"We missed composure. Our ideas were good. Our energy, we tried until the end. But we lacked composure at the end."
