Brighton’s WORST EVER Performance: The Nominations
In these dark days of no football and coronavirus, football websites across the country are taking to social media to relive their club’s greatest moments. Well, not us – being the negative bastards we are, we’ve decided instead to run a vote to find Brighton’s Worst Ever Performance.
Needless to say, there were plenty of candidates to fill the 16 spaces available in the tournament. There’s games from every decade stretching right back to the 1970s and through all four divisions of the Football League.
Given the Albion’s long and proud tradition of embarrassing FA Cup eliminations to sides from lower divisions, there are plenty of wonderful moments from the world’s greatest cup competition thrown in too.
The way the competition is going to work is that these 16 candidates for Brighton’s worst ever performance will be randomly split into four groups of four.
Voting will then take place on Facebook and Twitter, the scores for each game will be pooled together and the top two from each group will progress to the knockout stages. It is essentially a European Championships but instead of sovereign nations, it features rubbish games of football.
The selection process will begin on Friday morning at 10am and if our maths is correct – which it probably isn’t – should last right the way through for 19 days, which will take us until Tuesday 7th April. Something to keep everyone entertained while we’re all in lockdown, anyway.
So without further ado and in no particular order – here are the candidates for Brighton’s worst ever performance:
A game so bad that you had to laugh. One of the League One relegation favourites Walsall came to Withdean and went down to 10 men inside of 15 minutes when Rhys Weston was sent off. They were reduced to nine on 33 when Netan Sansara saw red. And yet despite having two less players on the pitch, the Saddlers managed to score the only goal of the game on the stroke of half time through Dwayne Mattis.
Brighton meanwhile spent the entire hour in which they had a significant numerical advantage working the ball out wide to either Dean Cox or Gary Hart who would then cross straight into the six yard box and the arms of Clayton Ince. Over and over and over again.
In the 1997-98 season, Brighton and Doncaster Rovers were two of the worst teams ever to grace the Football League. They ended the campaign miles adrift at the bottom of Division Three with the Albion lucky that only one side dropped into the Conference in those days.
Needless to say, it was far from a classic when they met at Priestfield on Saturday 14th February 1998. At the time, Rovers were under the ownership of madman Ken Richardson whose attempts to run the club into the ground and profit from its demise included attempting to burn down the main stand at Belle Vue.
As a result, the game was billed as Fans United II which meant that over 6,000 fans from clubs around England were subjected to the torture alongside seasoned Brighton and Doncaster supporters.
Brighton’s visits to MK Dons haven’t provided much cheer down the years, but their worst ever performance at stadium:mk came in the midst of the League One relegation battle at the business end of the 2008-09 season. The 2-0 defeat inflicted by goals from Ali Gerba and Jason Puncheon left the Albion eight points adrift of safety with seven games remaining.
Even worse was that only one player – Andy Whing – seemed to give a toss. Craig Davies strutted around without a care in the world, culminating in him putting the ball over the bar from four yards out. He was greeted with “Wanker! Wanker! Wanker!” chants at the end; the other players with the exception of Whing were lucky to get away with just a “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” from the 3,000 strong away following.
Brighton went to the Boleyn Ground with an outside chance still of making the Championship play offs in 2012. Being 3-0 down inside of 11 minutes against West Ham United all but put paid to that with the Hammers eventually walking off with a 6-0 victory.
Ricardo Vaz Te was made to look like prime Pele while at the other end of the scale, Peter Brezovan resembled a bloke who’d won a corn flake competition to be a professional goalkeeper for the day.
Drawing 0-0 at home with Darlington isn’t a good result at the best of times. But drawing 0-0 at home to a Darlington side who played for over an hour with a 5’6 striker in goal makes this a rank outsider for the crown of Brighton’s worst performance ever.
Darlo number one David Preece was given his marching orders with just 29 minutes played. His place was taken by Carl Shutt, a tiny centre forward who looked like a jockey as he pulled on Preece’s red and yellow polka dot goalkeeper jersey which was about three sizes too big. Not only did the Albion fail to score past the pint sized part time net minder, but they barely mustered a shot.
Fast forward 18 months and a 0-0 draw with Darlington suddenly seemed like a bloody brilliant result. Jeff Wood’s reign had been a complete shambles from the moment he was given the manager’s job on a full time basis and this was the tip of the iceberg as Marco Gabbiadini led the visitors to a 4-0 Priestfield win.
To make matters even worse, this was the game for which the Albion had decided to lay on free bus travel to Gillingham for schoolkids all over Sussex. Match tickets were made £1 for under 16s as the club tried to entice a new generation of youngsters to become Seagulls fans ahead of the move to Withdean. What stunning timing on Brighton’s behalf to deliver a real contender for the club’s worst ever performance.
The mid-90s were full of FA Cup shockers for the Albion. In three seasons, we lost to Kingstonian, drew with Canvey Island and lost to Sudbury Town.
The Canvey game saw players offering out supporters afterwards and Liam Brady telling the BBC in his post match interview that if his granny had balls she’d be his granddad. Sudbury meanwhile was the last FA Cup match ever played at the Goldstone and we lost on penalties to a team inspired by a postman.
Those two fixtures did at least have the excuse that they were happening to the backdrop of constant protests and a fight to save the club. There was no such reasoning behind the 2-1 first round exit to Kingstonian in 1994. Jamie Ndah scored twice in an exhibition of pure excrement from the Albion.
One of the most humbling home defeats Brighton have suffered came when Division Three leaders Bristol Rovers arrived at the Goldstone in 1973.
The Albion were still the centre of footballing attention in England as the media continued to descend on Hove to discern what the great Brian Clough was doing in charge of a struggling third tier side. Which meant ITV’s Big Match cameras were in town to beam footage of the Albion’s humiliating 8-2 defeat to the Gas into homes around the country.
Oh yeah, we should have mentioned – four days before that hammering at the hands of Bristol Rovers, Clough’s Brighton had lost 4-0 at home to Isthmian League side Walton & Hersham in an FA Cup first round replay.
A 0-0 draw at the non-league sides Stompond Lane ground was embarrassing enough. Worse was to come though as joiner Clive Foskett hit an eight minute hat-trick in what must rank as Brighton’s worst ever Cup defeat and performance.
It would be more than 45 years before Brighton suffered a home defeat as heavy as that Bristol Rovers debacle. Losing 5-0 at home to relegation rivals Bournemouth had far reaching consequences as the result that led many Albion fans – and ultimately Tony Bloom – to conclude that the club’s greatest ever manager in Chris Hughton’s time at Amex was coming to an end.
Anthony Knockaert’s red card. The players appearing to down tools. Glenn Murray sitting on the bench watching it all unfold. Like-for-like substitutions and no attempt to change shape or the game. And a half-empty stadium by the time the full time whistle brought the horror show to an end. 90 minutes of pure misery.
Bas Savage and George O’Callaghan had just left Brighton after contract disputes and while making highly critical public comments of Dick Knight. Captain Dean Hammond was also yet to sign a new deal and he seemed likely to be sold as a result.
Acrimony was well and truly in the air at Withdean, so what better way to calm some of the restlessness then with a straightforward FA Cup tie? Victory over Mansfield Town – sitting in 92nd place in the Football League and without an away win in nearly year – would book a place in the fourth round of the competition for the first time since in 15 years.
Final score – Brighton 1-2 Mansfield Town.
Only once in the Amex era so far have we seen the crowd really turn on a manager. That came when Sami Hyypia oversaw a spineless 1-0 defeat at home to Millwall on a Friday night in December 2014. There was fighting among Albion fans in the North Stand and a wonderful Hyypia out banner appeared on the terraces.
Even more shocking than Brighton’s performance that day was the fact that Hyypia offered his resignation afterwards – and the club turned it down. Tony Bloom and Paul Barber must have hit the Christmas sherry early that weekend. They sobered up relatively quickly and 10 days and a 1-1 draw at Wolverhampton Wanderers later and Hyypia was gone.
Oldham is the coldest place in the world at the best of times, let alone in December. It doesn’t get any warmer when ex-Albion striker Andy Ritchie is tearing you to pieces alongside Ian Marshall, you’re watching a team wearing a pink kit with NOBO on the front in a less-than-tolerant town and it’s all taking place on a plastic pitch.
Dean Wilkins did score a screamer however and Brighton managed to make the Division Two play offs come the end of the season despite having a negative goal difference. So, all’s well that ends well.
You know it’s good when the Sky Sports News vidiprinter has to write out the score in words in case viewers disbelief the numbers. Huddersfield Town 7 (SEVEN) Brighton and Hove Albion 1 was the most recent occasion that we were treated to that joy.
Russell Slade spoke afterwards like a man who’d suffered shell shock. That wasn’t really a surprise as nobody had seen this one coming. Even Michel Kuipers’ sending off five minutes before half time didn’t provide a good enough excuse for such a hammering 252 miles from home on a Tuesday night.
Things were going quite well as half time rolled around at Fratton Park on March 31st 1984. Danny Wilson’s penalty had given Brighton the lead and the Albion looked on course for success against their south coast rivals.
What followed was a quite spectacular collapse. Pompey scored five times in 13 minutes, it started pissing it down with rain and to rub salt into the wounds, the Albion supporters were locked inside the ground on an uncovered terrace for ages afterwards while the tannoy played local radio commentary of all five Portsmouth goals on a loop. And it was rail replacement buses home.
Mark McGhee’s Brighton were already relegated from the Championship by the time Stoke City came to town for the final game of the 2005-06 campaign. And boy did it show as the players put in zero effort on their way to a 5-1 defeat.
This was so bad that the Withdean South Stand actually celebrated Stoke’s fourth and fifth goals. Potters hat-trick hero Adam Rooney received a standing ovation and chants of “Rooney, Rooney, Rooney” when he was substituted after plundering the first – and probably only – treble of his career. One fan even threw his season ticket book towards the home dugout in disgust as he left, a pretty pointless gesture given that the season was over.
And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, McGhee then came out afterwards and said the game didn’t matter anyway. That makes this performance one of Brighton’s very worst – not only were the Albion abject, but they didn’t give a toss either.
Keep an eye on both our We Are Brighton Facebook page and our We Are Brighton Twitter feed from Friday 20th March to cast your votes for Brighton’s Worst Ever Performance.
If you like what you’ve read on WeAreBrighton.com this season, please could you take a moment to nominate us for the Football Content Awards 2020? Simply fill in the box below and press “Nominate me”. Thanks for your support.
