Dream start - but Kazenga LuaLua relives 'horrible' season

The exciting winger, given the run of starts he craved by boss Chris Hughton, could seemingly do no wrong.

Three winning goals, a super strike in the 3-2 win at leaders Ipswich and the run to win a decisive late penalty at Fulham – all in August.

He won the Championship’s player of the month contest. Except it wasn’t really a contest. He was an obvious choice.

Now, LuaLua has spoken to The Argus about how that dream month was also the start of a nightmare season.

And why that gives him extra reason to play his way back into the starting XI and shrug off that ‘impact player’ tag once and for all.

If he can do that in time to play a significant part back in his old home city of Newcastle later this month, all the better.

LuaLua agrees last August was the best month of his career. But that final game, the emotional win at Ipswich after which he spoke so well about dedicating the win to the victims of the Shoreham Airshow disaster, was also the start of his problems.

Prize time for LuaLua last August

He told The Argus: “It was just a silly injury. It was the game against Ipswich when we won 3-2. I was struggling with my groin.

“The following away game, we were at Wolves and I just felt a sharp pain. Even before the game, in the warm-up, I didn’t feel right at all.

“It was so hard to take because I was doing so well.

“Last season was one of the toughest times I’ve had in a long time.

“It was so horrible watching the boys. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again. I want to have a good season, injury-free.”

The cruel irony for LuaLua is that injury came at a time when he was seen as a key starter by Hughton – and being left on when the going got tough.

Fulham was a case in point. With Albion having let slip a lead and been forced on to the back foot, the normal script said LuaLua would be taken off and a holding midfielder sent on.

But he stayed on as changes were made, with Solly March and Sam Baldock making way, and won the injury-time penalty from which Tomer Hemed slotted the winner.

That sort of faith from the boss was a breakthrough as far as the player himself was concerned.

But, after so long being sent on for the last 20 minutes or taken off after an hour, was it a coincidence that his groin gave way during a busy series of regular starts?

“It was the best month of my career,” he said. “I was enjoying myself. Everything was going nice.

“We were winning and I was doing really well. Just one freaky injury cost me.

“I don’t think since I’ve been at Brighton I had started five games in a row before. That was with Sami Hyypia, even Gus (Poyet, who signed him). Every manager.

LuaLua hits the winner at home to Forest last August

“The run of starts was something I wasn’t used to. It’s not an excuse but it was something I had never done before.

"Maybe I was fatigued, I don’t know, but I was meant to be injured for a few weeks, then it was meant to be for a month. But it kept going.

“It was horrible, I can tell you that.”

LuaLua came back in the New Year but he was never the livewire who had started the season.

The landscape ahead of him changed, too. Yes, right-sided Solly March and Liam Rosenior were ruled out.

But Jiri Skalak and Anthony Knockaert both joined the club midway through the season – and one knock-on effect of the Frenchman’s arrival was that Jamie Murphy was free to play on the left.

Which brings us to the current situation. Knockaert and Skalak are first choices and Murphy, who scored twice in midweek, and LuaLua are doing all they can to push them.

“Skalak is ahead of me but there’s me, Anthony and Jamie all desperate to play,” he said.

“Me and Murph are out of the team but we are desperate to play.”

On Tuesday they did their bit, especially in the last half-hour, as tiring Colchester were brushed aside 4-0.

For quite a while LuaLua did what he sometimes does. Threatened but never delivered.

Early in the second half he raced away down the left, then horribly overhit his cross.

And then we were reminded of the match-winner he can be – and invariably was this time last year.

He brought gasps from the crowd with a fabulous first touch to take a long, lofted pass and picked out Sam Baldock to curl the opener.

His assist for the second goal, by Murphy, also combined explosive pace and good skills with a cool head and precise delivery.

All that was missing was his goal – and, from the West Lower, one wondered how a curling effort did not find its way inside the far post.

Was LuaLua the best player over the full 90 minutes? Probably not. But he was the one player who made the difference and opened up the tie just when one or two thoughts might have been turning towards the chances of extra-time.

“That is my game, to get involved and to get the ball as much as I can, which I have always done since I’ve been here,” he said.

Yes, it was only against Colchester. And a Colchester side who changed their defensive set-up.

But it was the LuaLua fans remembered from a year ago.

The battle for wing places is very much on.