Balloons gate – what does it all mean for the Brighton players?
The Premier League is on its first ever winter break. A nice, relaxing two weeks without football. Or so we thought. Within a week, several Brighton players had been caught on camera appearing to inhale balloons in a bar or nightclub in Tenerife, sparking a media storm.
In a short video clip posted on Twitter, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, Leandro Trossard, Shane Duffy and Pascal Gross appear at a table full of drinks and a shisha pipe. The clip has since been taken down, but not before every national newspaper was able to sensationalise the story.
The players are also seen inhaling from balloons. They may have just been blowing them up to celebrate a hilarious own goal rescuing a point against second-bottom of the Premier League Watford on Saturday.
Brighton players aren’t the first to have been caught inhaling balloons. Several Arsenal stars including Mesut Özil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette were apparently seen taking part in the act in an incident in a London nightclub in December 2018.
Jack Grealish in 2015 and Kyle Walker in 2013 are other big names to have been caught sucking on balloons in the past.
While the focus of the national media has been on the players inhaling the balloons, Brighton fans have been more concerned about what this whole incident means for the club as a whole.
Why are the players out partying in Spain when we’re in the middle of another relegation battle? And the question that ultimately seems to have split the Albion support down the middle – does it really matter?
One side of the argument is that the players in questions are just young blokes having a good time. Vast swathes of the population inhale nitrous oxide on a regular basis – so why should footballers be held to a higher morale standard than the man on the street?
The answer of course is they shouldn’t. They’re human beings who are going to like a beer and a party as much as the next person.
When the Albion were busy winning promotion to the Premier League, 90% of fans celebrated the fact that our players were so human. There they were crowd surfing on trains and drinking beer with supporters on West Street.
The whole of Brighton felt like a month-long party with the players at the centre of it. It may have cost us our hopes of the Championship title, but the job had always been promotion. Let them let their hair down, especially if they’re drinking with us in Molly Malone’s.
You can’t have it both ways. If you want your players to be human and in touch with fans, then you have to accept that it’s going to happen in the good times and the bad.
Players drinking has been going on since the dawn of time. One of our favourite ever Albion stories involves a 44-year-old Dave Beasant being seen lying on the floor of a kebab shop in Brighton at 2am on a Wednesday morning in 2003.
The Albion had drawn 0-0 at home to Crystal Palace a few hours earlier. Beasant had a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Had camera phones and social media existed back then, the press would have had a field day.
Kurt Nogan loved a night out on West Street and in various bookmakers. The Jury’s Inn incident came about after a night of heavy drinking in town. Footballers have always loved a drink.
The difference now of course is that there are cameras everywhere and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram mean that news and videos can spread like wildfire.
Brighton are also a Premier League club, where scrutiny and media interest is frankly obscene. The players only crime in that regard was that somebody saw the chance to make a name for themselves and so invaded the players’ privacy by filming them.
Judging by the reactions to many Albion fans on Twitter telling the original poster to take the video down, that’s what lots of supporters felt. And quite right too.
The other view – and this is why it does matter – is that highly played professional sports people should not be partying if they want to play at the top level.
A sportsman’s career is short. That’s why the very best athletes sacrifice everything to make the most of their time at the top.
Hardly any of them drink for starters. Novak Djokovic celebrates winning titles by treating himself to one square of dark chocolate. The dedication that the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham put into their craft hardly needs mentioning.
To make the most out of their brief time in football, should our players not give up the partying? They can do it all day long when they retire with the millions they’ll have in their bank accounts.
Drinking with the regularity that they do – and it is regular among some of the squad – cannot be good for their long-term careers.
Brighton fans pay up to £800 a season for the privilege of watching these players play. Is it too much to ask for them to match the effort that we do in finding that cash, turning up to the Amex every week and following them the length and breadth of the country – especially when Paul Barber and Graham Potter have spent the last few week’s telling us to improve our support?
Support has to be earned. It isn’t just a God-given right. If the players took their duties a little bit more seriously, perhaps it would be.
Arguably the biggest question to come out of balloons gate is what does it mean for the culture around the Brighton squad – and most notably, the players’ drinking habits?
Chances are if you’ve been out on the town on a Saturday night, you’ll have spotted an Albion player. If you drink in Hove on Sunday and during midweek, you might have bumped into some of them too.
We’ve hard from various sources that the drinking culture and attitude among the squad towards the back end of last season was causing concern at board level.
That’s why Graham Potter’s first few months as Brighton manager were so interesting. Out went Anthony Knockaert. Out when Florin Andone. Out went Jurgen Locadia. Shane Duffy has been dropped to the bench.
Potter has quickly removed a number of individuals who were presumed by supporters to have questionable attitudes. A manager who believes in the collective power of the team and having the right approach to football wasn’t going to stand around for players who suffered from anger issues, laziness or a penchant for one too many beers.
This incident would suggest there is still some way to go. Here we are, in the middle of another relegation battle. One win in 12 games. The players are meant to be on a winter break, training to rediscover some form for the last few months of the campaign to keep Brighton up – and yet they appear to be out getting pissed and messing around with balloons.
Are they taking the situation seriously? Or do they just not care that much about preserving the Premier League status of the club which so many of their predecessors have worked so hard to achieve?
For what it’s worth, we’re kind of on the fence here at WeAreBrighton.com. Players should be allowed to let their hair down, especially at the start of a two-week period when we don’t have a game. It isn’t like they’ve got pissed 48 hours before Sheffield United away.
But on the other hand, we can see why some supporters are pissed off by the whole thing. It’s understandable to feel let down by these highly-paid professional sportsman seemingly not giving their all for the club that we love. It’s a difficult one and we don’t envy the powers that be that have to make a decision on what action to take.
Because there will be a decision about the night out and the Brighton players inhaling balloons. The Albion have told The Argus that, “The club is aware of the video circulating on social media. This matter is being dealt with internally.”
What doesn’t help the club is the ludicrous “besmirching” clause that they have inserted into the terms and conditions that govern having a MyAlbion+ membership.
Under rule 23, “MyAlbion+ Members and Brighton & Hove Albion match-ticket purchasers must at all times do everything within their power and control to protect and enhance the good name of the Club and not to diminish or besmirch the good name of the Club in any way or through any means.”
It goes onto state “Anybody in breach of these rules, can expect a lengthy and potential life ban, depending on the severity of the breach.”
The Albion can therefore ban any customer who besmirches the good name of the club. We hand them over £800 for a season ticket and are expected to protect and enhance the good name of the club for the privilege of what we pay. If we don’t, Brighton keep the money and we’re out on our ear.
Now, the Albion find themselves in a situation whereby four employees taking home around £45,000 a week in wages have without a doubt diminished and besmirched the good name of the Club. They certainly haven’t enhanced it.
If fans are held to such high account by the powers that be, then the players should be even more so? Joe Bloggs from Saltdean posting an ill-advised tweet which the Albion have no control over is surely far less serious than Brighton’s own players on a club-sanctioned holiday being out on the piss and inhaling from balloons?
We all know the answer to this one, of course. The club will happily ban supporters left, right and centre for spurious reasons under the banner of “besmirching”. When it comes to their own players, it’s a completely different matter.
And perhaps that is the biggest thing to take out of all this – what an absolute load of bollocks clause 23 is. If you can’t and won’t punish your own employees for failing to protect and enhance the good name of Brighton and Hove Albion, don’t do so to your customers.
We’re all only human, after all. And as long as the players learn from this, sort themselves out and maybe stop partying quite so much, should we really care? Especially if we do manage to stay up.
There is a school of thought that suggests the players as a collective are not fit enough. Certainly, watching the games on Sky this weekend, it would suggest there is evidence to support this.
The pace, movement and energy by all the teams performing seem somewhat advanced on that which we see in the players wearing the blue and white stripes. Watching Aaron Mooy chasing back to try to rectify his glaring blunder giving the ball away against Watford conjured up memories of Peter Reid playing for Everton back in the 80s.
If the club wishes to maintain its EPL status there needs to be improvements all round, starting with fitness.
it would seem.