Brighton can take it to big six – and they really don’t like it
Graham Potter once said that Brighton fans needed a history lesson. They got one on Saturday afternoon when the Albion inflicted their first defeat on Chelsea since Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister.
Brighton 4-1 Chelsea was one of those matches that will go down in the history books of the Amex era, a game loaded with emotion well before kick off.
The atmosphere was, for me, like nothing I’ve experienced save for perhaps the 2015-16 Championship playoff semi final against Sheffield Wednesday. Roberto De Zerbi was not wrong when he said the fans were the best player.
I wasn’t one who joined the booing of Potter, Bruno, Marc Cucurella and the rest. But the sense of betrayal and injustice fired up the fans in a way no fireworks, light shows or flags could. If only we could bottle that and pump it out at every home game…
The new-found resentment of Chelsea will probably only last as long as Potter’s tenure at Stamford Bridge, unless Todd Boehly makes poaching everything but the floor tiles at our Lancing training centre a regular thing.
With the likely departure of recruitment chief Paul Winstanley to West London in the coming days, that isn’t actually beyond the realms of possibility.
That said, 11-year-old me probably wouldn’t have predicted that we would be pursuing a bitter rivalry with Crystal Palace some 45 years on from a wildly contentious season in the late seventies.
October was always going to be a tough month for Brighton. From the high of demolishing Leicester City came Potter’s departure, an unexpected pause to the season caused by the passing of the Queen and rail strikes and then the fixture list from hell.
Only the most optimistic would have thought we could take points at Manchester City, with Erling Haaland scoring more frequently than the government changes cabinet ministers.
Pessimists will have predicted doom after failing to beat Nottingham Forest and Brentford despite that thrilling start to De Zerbi’s reign at Anfield.
One or two were, ridiculously, writing him off already. Perhaps the same people who wrote off the manager/team/chairman before we took down City two years ago, or United (twice) this year?
If we have learnt anything from the past couple of seasons, it is that wins and defeats can come against expectations.
Brighton have already this season taken points from Liverpool, United and Chelsea. Games against bottom of the league sides in contrast are not nailed-on victories.
Let us hope that next week’s game trip to second-from-bottom Wolves is not one of those. If, with the confidence from Saturday’s win over Chelsea, we can take the three points at Molineux, then a return to the top six is on.
Above us, Fulham in seventh take on City in second at the Etihad Stadium. Chelsea host Arsenal. Just below us and Palace visit West Ham whilst troubled Liverpool are away to third-placed Spurs.
That is five results – a decent accumulator bet – that would have to go our way for us to compound Graham Potter’s humiliation by supplanting Chelsea in sixth on goal difference come the end of next weekend. Potter would take the positives and move on, of course.
Four points from games against Wolves and under-performing Aston Villa at the Amex would surely secure a top 10 spot going into the World Cup break, something we would all have been very happy with even before the turmoil of the past two months.
If Kaoru Mitoma, Pervis Estupinan and Julio Enciso build on the promise they showed on Saturday – and with the squad bolstered by the return of Jakub Moder at some point – the second half of the season could be thrilling.
Whatever happens, it is so gratifying to see us take it to the “Big Six”, their fabulously wealthy owners, their arrogantly entitled fans and the complacent media pundits for whom the Premier League title and European places are a competition no other club dare enter.
Who knows, we might even write some more history along the way…
Warren Morgan @WarrenBHAFC
