Once again, here is an image to sum up the game.

See you in three games Matt.

Let’s not get too  carried away folks. Last time we won 2-1 on the opening day away from home, we ended up needing to win the last match of the season to stay in the league. But let’s also be honest, there’s a lot of positives to be taken from this, an excellent win without new captain Greer (chant of the day: “Where’s your captain gone?”) or main goal threat Glenn Murray.

It was a standard away day out really - highlights included a Millwall supporter locked in the train bog at Paddington for a good twenty minutes, as well as greeted by the inevitable cry of “town full of faggots” within seconds of entering the Swindon ‘Spoons. Ironically, the game clashed with Pride, so perhaps for once there was an element of truth to this. Anyway, it was clear the football season was back.

After navigating the magic roundabout, we took to the stand to watch a new-look Albion team fielding Jamie Smith for only his second start for  the club, alongside new signings Sparrow and Kishishev in midfield, Ankergren in goal, as well as the not-so-new signings Barnes, Calderon and Painter. They were of course backed by a brilliant away turnout of nearly 1500 supporters - but I suppose that goes without saying really.

A quick review of the “new” boys:

Smith looked lively and played all over midfield at some point - creating two of our goals. Not a bad return really for a man who a couple of weeks ago most people had forgotten about!

Calderon took the armband and looked strong at times, although perhaps not at full fitness yet.

Barnes was chasing everything on his own up top with little support.

Kishishev added a bit more strength alongside Navarro in a sort of defensive midfield role and spread the play around nicely

Painter, in our opinion anyway, looked like a Championship full-back. Solid for 90 minutes, getting forward effectively as well to support Smith and Bennett, who kept switching wings.

Ankergren had a funny game - not sending him off near the end was the right decision, but on another day could easily have gone against us. He looked composed though, and perhaps more confident in the closing stages as we fought off the Swindon onslaught during 5 minutes of added play that the ref invented.

The ref had a bit of a shocker actually - some bizarre decisions for both sides. Elphick could have given away a penalty in the first half; it looked as though he dragged down the Swindon forward in the box.

Anyway, to the last of the new boys. And what hasn’t been said about him already? Matt Sparrow. CLASS ACT. The day after ex -skipper Crofts scored on his Norwich debut, his replacement Sparrow went one better, scoring two quality goals. The first was a rocket, the second was a smart finish after a sublime counter attack. More games like this, and we’ll have a hell of a player to watch this season.

As said earlier, we’re not getting carried away. At times we looked good on the ball, at others we failed to threaten, and the goal conceded was traditionally bad Brighton defending really - we failed to clear our lines when we had a chance to. Still, what a great result - let’s hope we can keep it up at Withdean next weekend, and tomorrow night as well at Sixfields in the league cup (not that we’re too bothered about this one to be honest!) No, we can’t wait for the main event next weekend either; not the parading of a new million pound centre forward, but the return of the bacon baguettes!

We’ll have a report on the blog later this weekend  from our man that attended the game, but until then, here is an image that sums things up.

Hello reader,

Yep, it’s the day before the new season. The day before the inevitable rollercoaster season of entertainment, joy, frustration and disgust. Hopefully, this time, it’ll be more of the former. We’re excited, are you?

Today was an unusual “football season eve”. We’ve signed someone. And no, it wasn’t the much talked about “20+ goals a season striker” or Lua-Lua. No, it was Casper Ankergren, the ex-Leeds keeper. Now, this could prove a pivotal bit of business. While you’ve got to feel sorry for Poke, Poyet has at least held up his hands and accepted that, for the moment at least, he’s signed a keeper who isn’t good enough for a team with play-off aspirations. And in the absence of Brezovan, you don’t get much better than signing a keeper who has just won promotion at this level. We just hope he manages to gel with the backline quickly, as El-abd and Elphick aren’t exactly renowned for their strong openings to seasons. Last year, we faffed around with Smith, who plainly wasn’t good enough. Fortunately, we appear to have avoided a repeat of this. And with our track record of having keepers injured/banned, to have two excellent keepers will only be good for the season ahead.

This season promises to be a belter. But then again so did last season under Russell. And the season before under Mickey. So we need to be cautious about this campaign under Gus and Tano. We’ve made some sensible signings (Sparrow, Greer, Barnes) and some exciting ones (Baz, Battipiedi), but until we sign the forward and left wingers then realistically all we can hope for is the play-offs. We all want to be in The Championship at Falmer, but it’s not neccessarily that straight forward. Some of you might think that a little negative, but we are of the view that the 40% or so on NSC who think “we’re going up” are making that prediction based on Gus bringing in those extra players before the end of August. Without them, we’re a strong tream, but not a particularly intimidating one.

Southampton are obvious favourites for the title, but be aware of Sheffield Wedneday, who have made some quality purchases, alongside Huddersfield, Charlton, and Swindon, who all had good years last time round. Don’t write off Plymouth, Rochdale and Peterborough either. Posh in particular should be looking to give Southampton a run for their (lots of!) money.

Tomorrow, we take on one of those sides who performed well last season, Swindon, at the County Ground. They’ve lost Billy Paynter and Greer, but with the threat of Austin up front they should still be a force. If we lose, then expect to here comparisons with Norwich last year, who got tonken on day one, and went on to tear up the division. And without Greer and Murray, it’s not that unlikely that we’ll get beaten. But if the back four can find the form they showed at the end of last season, then there’s always a chance, especially if Barnes can get back to the form of his loan spell that he didn’t really show pre-season.

All the while we haven’t got a striker, it looks as though there’s going to be a lot of pressure on the shoulders of Glenn Murray this year. It’s just a shame he can’t play on Saturday. Everyone seems to be cautiously optimistic about him; he’s looked sharp in pre-season and a lot of people (us included) believe if he stays fit and free of suspension, then it could be a great season for him. And a good season for Glenn Murray could mean a great one for Brighton & Hove Albion. Equally though, none of us would be surprised if he keeps up his petulance and spends a quarter of the season on the sideline. Here’s hoping it’s not the latter.

Navarro has been talked about much this summer too, and it’ll be fascinating to see how he performs, after the praise from Steve Bruce in Portugal, and after he’s impressively won over the Albion crowd to become one of our key men.

We’ll be at the match tomorrow, hopefully following the game on our increasingly popular Twitter. If you see us at the game, give us a shout! And if you’re not there, give us a tweet!

Here’s to a good season!

The We Are Brighton team.

Just a very very quick note this time - if you want to find out what was said at the fans forum tonight, check out our twitter feed!

“Highlights” from our Tweets include:

• Brighton up to 4th favourites for the title. Gus: “Mama Mia!” - brilliant
• Lua-Lua still not ruled out. Well, there’s a shocker
• “Hi, i’m Richard, I’ve made the journey all the way from fiveways tonight, so that’s dedication” - ho, ho, ho

There’s lots more. Check them out by clicking here to follow us on Twitter!

Thanks for following/reading!

So,  yesterday we won a game at Withdean. Hoorah! Yet another screamer from Elliott Bennett was enough to defeat Mark McGhee’s Aberdeen, but it was the performance, more than the result, that will give the fans encouragement just one week before the start of the new season.

Pass and move, pass and move, pass and move - it’s simple stuff that everyone is encourage to do as a kid, but it’s a joy to watch a League 1 outfit avoiding the usual long-ball route and instead managing to keep it on the deck. Greer and Sparrow in particular should prove massive additions to what looks a squad worthy of a push for the play-offs.

Sadly though, just a few days before the trip to Swindon, we still don’t have that much talked about “proven 20+ goalscorer”. It’s no surprise really - everyone wants one, but it’s the teams prepared to pay the most (Southampton) and those in the league above that will get them. So many names have been mentioned (usually on North Stand Chat) but nothing has come of anyone of them yet. Simon Cox is the latest name doing the rounds - a proven centre forward at this level, but would he really drop 2 leagues to come to Withdean? Surely a Championship club will take a punt on him anyway? Time will tell, but sadly it looks likely that it’s Barnes/Hart/Holroyd fighting it out for the striking positions on day 1, and we’ll be relying on Glenn Murray to prove he can be our 20+ goal a season man. Our fingers are crossed, but we’re not holding our breath.

One of the names talked about on NSC is Leon Knight, after his recent postings on the forum. We spoke to him, and you can hear that interview here. We very much doubt we’ll be seeing him back here any time soon, but it’s good that the bloke has finally realised he needs to drop the attitude, get his head down and get on with doing what we all know he can do - scoring goals.

Meanwhile, Lua-Lua might be signing for us. So basically, nothing has change on that front since the day last season ended!

We’ll be at Swindon next week and will be attempting to bring live updates from our increasingly popular Twitter page. Follow us now if you haven’t already - it’s the most followed BHAFC page out there! We’re also on Facebook too, and we’ll be looking to keep you updated on all things Albion this season! And it won’t be long before the Albion Moan-In returns - although let’s hope there isn’t much to moan about!!

That’s all for now - hopefully we’ll have Lua-Lua and a new striker by the time of the next blog entry!

Cheers
The We are Brighton team

No, we haven’t gone totally mad. The Albions pre-season friendly game against Portugese top flight side Portimonense was abandoned following a mass brawl. The Johny foreigners were seemingly less than happy with Ashley Barnes enthusiasm for a tackle, with their forward Ivanildo chasing the forward twenty years before smacking him one. Gus Poyet lead the charge onto the pitch from both dugouts to “calm things down” as players from both sides piled in, before the referee decided enough was enough and along with his officials marched off the pitch and down the tunnel

Albion fans may remember the infamous Battle of Longford, the pre-season game during a tour of Ireland which was abandoned following another mass brawl in which Charlie Oatway found himself being dismissed. No cards were issued today, and it is probably safe to say that it is unlikely that we will be having any sort of link club relationship with Portimonense anytime soon!

Well, sort of. Following the mind blowing and world changing news that former Alive and Kicking presenter Jamie Theakston was following The Argus on Twitter, you can imagine the delight that spread around We Are Brighton HQ when, at 18.02 on Friday 23 July 2010, we recieved a notification informing us that the serial charity football game goalkeeper was also following us on Twitter.

Jamie gave what can only be described as a stunning performance, particularly when it came to saving penalties, when playing for England in the Soccer Aid match at Old Trafford back in June, so much so that there was a bizarre clamour to get him on the plane to South Africa, which given Robert Green’s less than convincing efforts against the USA may not have been such a bad thing.

All that we need now is Fatboy Slim and Des Lynam we can lay claim to having the three most famous Albion fans all onboard. Oh, and if you are not yet doing so, why not join Mr Theakston by following us as well - http://www.twitter.com/wearebrighton

No, don’t be silly, of course we haven’t re-signed him. Or any other striker who has proved themselves at this level for that matter.

For those of you that are either too young to remember Leon, have strangely selective memory, or have alzheimer’s disease, he’s the bloke who scored the penalty that won the play-off final for us, before his career went rapidly downhill after falling out with Mark McGhee and various managers at other clubs after that including Swansea, McDons, Hamilton Acidemicals and some shitty Greek outfit. After leaving the Albion, he made some rather nasty remarks about our tiny club, small fanbase and crap facilities.

Anyway, Leon has, somewhat bizarrely, taken the decision to follow in the footsteps of Albion greats Paul Camillin, Martin Perry and “Uncle Buck”, by having his own North Stand Chat thread designed with the sole purpose of allowing fans to ask questions.

The thread can be found here. We’re not sure, but it seems to be either an attempt at “kissing and making up” with the Brighton fans that once adored him, or a pretty unorthadox tactic to boost the sales of his soon to be released biography.

It may not be an autobiography he’s plugging, but that doesn’t mean he’s not capable of writing English. Frankly, we’re impressed that a footballer can differentiate between “to” and “too”. And although we’re not certain it’s the real Leon Knight, the NSC administrator is apparently convinced, having seemingly had Leon Skype him. There’s a man you’d want to stumble across on chat roulette!

We’ve collected a few highlights from the thread (it’s currently longer than the Bible, and still growing). However, at the moment we’re struggling to find all of Leon’s comments in amongst all the responses of “are you real?” “Leon you’re a tw*t” and “Leon I love you” (delete as appropriate). But there are some “fascinating” revelations in there, including the following:

• “i have never thought im jermain defoe in league 1 im leon knight in league 1 i would never wanna be jermain defoe that i can promise u “
• He’s not trying to be Peter Ward either.
• He never drove to training in a tractor.
• “yeah mate I have 3 sisters”
• Kerry Mayo ISN’T the greatest player he’s ever played with.
• ” i liked the way darren currie played “
• “nah mate im a million per cent straight
  2 kids and a wife pal “
• “me and chippy really didnt get on so i really could not care less about what he thinks “
• ” i hate palace “
• “yes i have a punch up with charlie oatway one training session but i love charlie we was both heated and we squared up and he through the 1st punch \ slap and then i threw and few punches back then it got broke up and then we kissed and made up”
• “gazza and me dont know one another “

Hopefully there’ll be lots more insights to come! (and some proper striker transfer news as well!)

Leon’s finest moment for the club:

There are two major problems with pre-season friendlies. One is that they are usually about as entertaining as re-runs of Crossroads. The other is identifying just who is who owing to the large number of new players on offer. One member of the We Are Brighton team fell foul of the latter point on Saturday at Burgess Hill.

Seeking to take advantage of his somewhat drunkern state, his peers informed him that standing by the players tunnel watching the second half was none other than our new signing from Scunthorpe, Captain Matt Sparrow. Like a schoolboy on Christmas morning he bounded over and asked for a photo, before the man revealed that he wasn’t actually Matt Sparrow. Nonetheless, he was good enough to pretend that he was and pose for the photo anyway, in the process missing a goal which was thankfully flagged for offside

We’ve performed a little photoshoppery to cut down on the embarassment for the drunkern oaf in question, but the question still remains - does anybody know who this man actually is? A member of the back room staff? A Burgess Hill player? A member of the Burgess Hill back room staff? A man who thought that he would whip his shirt off and stand by the players tunnel in the hope that some poor drunkern fool would, on the guidance of his friends, mistake him for a professional footballer? Answers on a post card please. Some sort of prize may be offered. But I doubt it