Georginio Rutter and Yasin Ayari sink Burnley to end Brighton’s winless run

Brighton snapped a six-match winless run with a comfortable home victory over second-bottom Burnley.

Georginio Rutter gave Brighton a first-half lead before Yasin Ayari doubled the advantage early in the second period. Loum Tchaouna came close to halving the deficit, but Scott Parker’s struggling side remain six points adrift of Nottingham Forest in 17th after their wait for a league victory stretched to 11 games.

Parker said: “We lacked belief and I didn’t feel for one second that it was a team or group that ever believed they could come here and get a result really. You can lose football matches but there are ways of losing and I just felt we looked at times powder puff.

“We were never in the game. We didn’t deserve anything just from our general approach and body language and the way we went about it. The [winless] run is the run. But you need to bring a certain something about you as a group.

“Today what concerns me, what angers me, frustrates me, and makes me hugely disappointed was we didn’t show that. We just rolled over. If you perform like we did today, you ain’t collecting enough points to stay in this division, no chance.”

Asked about his future, Parker, who led Burnley to promotion last season, said: “That’s out of my hands. I have the utmost support from ownership, from everyone at the football club. I’m fully committed and I feel like everyone at the football club is as well. We’re all hurting, we’re all disappointed but we’ll keep going.”

Brighton began the day in 14th position after picking up three points from 18 available during December, while Burnley had collected two from a possible 30 dating back to October.

Charalampos Kostoulas, who made his first Premier League start as part of four changes from Tuesday’s 2-2 draw at West Ham, was denied a 10th-minute opener by a marginal offside.

Brighton continued to be the dominant side and edged ahead in the 29th minute with their first attempt on target. After Ayari’s effort from the edge of the penalty area deflected off Kostoulas, the ball broke kindly for Rutter to slam home his second goal of the season into the bottom-left corner from a tight angle.

Burnley, who made three changes from a 3-1 midweek loss to Newcastle, had failed to win any of their previous 39 matches when conceding first in the Premier League, but did threaten to snatch an equaliser in first-half added time when Lucas Pires’s low shot was repelled by the left leg of goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen.

Brighton doubled their advantage within two minutes of the restart. The Burnley midfielder Lesley Ugochukwu conceded possession on the edge of his own area, allowing Ayari to sidestep Bashir Humphreys and drill an angled finish into the bottom-left corner.

Kostoulas thumped straight at the Burnley keeper, Martin Dubravka, before Burnley almost pulled one back in the 67th minute. After Verbruggen flapped at Pires’s corner from the right, Tchaouna nodded towards the unguarded net, only for Ferdi Kadioglu to produce a superb last-ditch clearance by heading the ball against the crossbar.

Pascal Gross, who rejoined Brighton from Borussia Dortmund on Friday, received a rapturous reception from home fans when he was brought on for the final 19 minutes as part of a triple change. Gross’s fellow substitute, Maxim De Cuyper, almost added a third six minutes from time when he rattled the left post with a curling free-kick.

Burnley offered little in response as Brighton finally registered a first Premier League home win over their opponents at the seventh attempt.

The Brighton head coach, Fabian Hürzeler, said: “The run wasn’t great but we always stuck together. We had good performances in this run, we had some not so good performances. But overall I think the effort from the players, the effort from the staff, how we work together, it’s always good, it’s always like we want to have it.

“I always emphasis that when you work hard at one point you get what you deserve and that’s what we have to keep doing. It was a good game, not a great game, we controlled the game. We kept a clean sheet, we created chances, we could score more goals, but overall we are pleased.”