Brighton face Ajax in a must-win game at the Amex

Forget the name for a minute. The Total Football of the 1970s. The club of Johan Cruyff. The iconic red and white kit. The four European titles. Brighton & Hove Albion in October 2023 should be defeating Ajax Amsterdam. And if they want their Europa League campaign to extend beyond Christmas, they kind of have to.

The Dutch giants arrive in England in what can only be described as a crisis. One win in all competitions so far this season. 17th of 18 teams in the Eredivisie, the lowliest positions this great club have ever occupied.

Forget adding a 37th domestic title to their glittering collection, right now the focus is on avoiding relegation into the second tier. Unthinkable.

Ajax have no manager and their supporters have been so disgusted by performances and results as to riot, smashing up and setting fire to their own stadium.

Puts Graham Potter throwing his toys out of the pram because 50 people booed when Brighton went 11 games without a win into perspective.

De Klassieker with arch rivals Feyenoord last month had to be abandoned with Ajax trailing 3-0 and finished behind closed doors.

A final score of 4-0 was a total and utter humiliation for one of the most famous and successful clubs in European football history.

What we are trying to say here is that Ajax are a mess. If Brighton cannot beat at home the second-worst team in a league where Alireza Jahanbakhsh is a champion and DJ Jurgen Locadia scored goals for fun, they do not deserve to continue in Europe this season.

That is one of the reasons why this is being a billed a must-win game for the Albion. Another is that defeat would leave Brighton floundering at the bottom of Europa League Group B, four points behind even Ajax.

With only one home game left to play out of three, the Albion would be facing an uphill task to make it through to the knockout stages. Even finishing third and qualifying for the Europa Conference in the new year might be a stretch.

But the biggest reason Brighton need a result against Ajax is because the Albion themselves are on a five game winless run, representing the worst sequence of results of the Roberto De Zerbi Era so far.

In a sign of the seas the Seagulls now swim in (or should that be the skies they fly in?), all five of those matches have come against European champions.

Chelsea. Aston Villa. Marseille. Liverpool. Manchester City. A horror run of fixtures even before you consider the injury crisis gulfing the Amex currently.

Ajax therefore represents the best chance Brighton have had of victory since the 3-1 win over Plucky Little Bournemouth a month ago.

Should the winless run stretch to seven after Ajax and Sunday’s home game with a Fulham side suffering second season syndrome, then perhaps it will be time to ponder if there is more going on than just a difficult set of matches in succession?

Having chopped and changed the starting XI with more frequency than the Tories lose by-elections, De Zerbi has some big selection decisions to make.

When the Albion team is announced, most eyes will first scan the line up to deduce who is playing left back. It could literally be anyone.

Igor Julio. James Milner. Pascal Gross. Kaoru Mitoma. Simon Adingra. Jack Hinshelwood. Or as the great Malcolm Tucker says in The Thick of It, my left bollock with a smiley face drawn on.

Who starts in goal? Who partners Lewis Dunk? Who plays at 10? Who leads the line with Danny Welbeck seemingly out for some time.

Personally, I blame Dat Guy’s long-term injury on whatever website wrote that article in the summer about how everyone should stop calling him injury prone. Oh, shit…

Whoever De Zerbi goes with (even my left bollock with a smiley face drawn on) will need to show the sort of character the Albion displayed in coming from 2-0 down in the cauldron of the Stade Velodrome to draw 2-2 with Marseille three weeks ago.

A second half performance like the one delivered in the South of France can deliver three points against Ajax and belatedly get Brighton’s European campaign up and running.

Never did I ever think that one day, we would be sat here talking about expecting a victory in a must-win game over Amsterdamsche Football Club Ajax.

But now is the time to stop focussing so much on the past and concentrate on the here and now. Forget what Ajax did in the 1970s. Forget their dominance of Dutch football. Forget the reputation.

Brighton belong in this season’s Europa League. They should beat Ajax. They need to beat Ajax. A big night is in store once again at the Amex.

Just please don’t set fire to out ground, Ajax fans. It took 14 years to get it planned, allowed and built.