Brighton have the balls to say what the rest of the Premier League think

Over the last few weeks, Brighton & Hove Albion have become the most hated football club in England. Their crime? While the rest of the Premier League are too scared to speak publicly about what they really feel about how the season should be resumed for fear of upsetting anyone, Brighton are the only club with the balls to say what the majority are thinking.

For that, they’ve been hammered by the press and the public. It is all a ploy to avoid relegation. The Albion should be hit with immediate relegation to the Championship, docked points and suffer some sort of financial penalty.

You name a punishment and people want to see Brighton hit with it – simply because people connected with the club are willing to say what no one else will.

It all began with neutral venues. Brighton deputy chairman Paul Barber was one of the only Premier League executives willing to go public with his opposition to the plan, saying it would ruin the sporting integrity of the season to remove home advantage from the final quarter of the season.

This set heads exploding in places such as Liverpool, Leeds and in the homes of various prominent journalists including Jamie Carragher – who of course is entirely neutral in this debate and not desperate to put lives at risk just to see Liverpool win the title.

Apparently, Brighton’s opposition to the plan was purely to do with relegation. The Albion wanted the season cancelled so that they could avoid dropping out of the Premier League.

This was now seemingly guaranteed, despite the fact Graham Potter’s side lay 15th in the table and haven’t been in the bottom three at any point in their three seasons in the top flight so far. Hardly the foregone conclusion that these ‘experts’ were suggesting.

Barber and Brighton were absolutely hammered for their stance. And then – lo and behold – at last week’s Premier League meeting, it turned out that 14 other top flight clubs were against neutral venues, and so the plan was shelved.

Suddenly, it wasn’t just about Brighton wanting to cancel the Premier League season to avoid relegation. Other relegation threatened clubs like, er, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal were also desperate to avoid playing Championship football in the 2020-21 season.

Then there were Glenn Murray’s comments on Sky Sports last week. Murray told The Football Show that given the United Kingdom is only just emerging from lockdown, he and other players feel that it may not be safe yet to resume football.

Murray said, “The Premier League does need to go on, but if we give ourselves a little bit more time, the country will be back up and running again, we’ll have learned more about this virus, we won’t necessarily have a vaccine, but we’ll be better prepared to deal with it if anyone does get it.”

“I can’t understand after loosening the lockdown why we’re in such a rush to get it back when we could just wait a month and see if things go to plan.”

“Why not see how the country copes with lessening the lockdown without starting unnecessary sports when people are dying all around us, and the death rate is still high.”

Murray was suddenly public enemy number one. Of course Carragher piled in, as did Fleetwood Town manager Joey Barton, who presumably wants the League One season to resume as otherwise, he might fail to get his expensively-assembled Fleetwood squad into the playoffs if a weighted points-per-game system decides that division.

There are countless other Premier League players who feel the same as Murray. Watford’s Troy Deeney said he’d rather go bankrupt and lose his career than risk him or his family getting coronavirus – which doesn’t really suit the argument that players are happy to be paid for doing nothing, but take away their wages and they would soon return to action.

Murray and Deeney are of course both in a Premier League relegation battle this season with Brighton and Watford respectively. Again, that made them easy targets – they only don’t want to play because they are scared of going down.

On Sunday Supplement at the weekend, the Daily Mail’s Ian Ladyman suggested that it was telling that we were only hearing the fears of players near the bottom of the Premier League table about returning. Ladyman’s implication was that these concerns aren’t health and safety based, but purely self-interest.

Firstly, that completely ignores the fact that Raheem Sterling, Sergio Aguero and Tammy Abraham have all spoken out. Has Ladyman not looked at the Premier League table recently to realise that Manchester City aren’t likely to join Brighton and Watford in the relegation battle anytime soon?

And secondly, the reason that we’ve only heard a small percentage of Premier League players speak out is because of the reaction of the likes of Ladyman, Carragher, Barton and all those Liverpool and Leeds fans who think that playing football should be prioritised over the health of the participants, just so their clubs can win something.

Imagine if a Liverpool player or Jurgen Klopp came out publicly and said they don’t want the season resumed until it was safe to do so?

The swivel eyed loons who call themselves Redmen would lose their minds; how dare one of their own players value anything more than Liverpool getting their hands on their precious Premier League title.

Yet you can guarantee there will be Liverpool players who have reservations. As Murray put it to The Football Show, “Trying to get 25 lads all on board, that’s not just 25 lads with the same mentality, we’ve got people from all over the world in different situations and it’s difficult to lead a group and everyone to agree.”

“I think first and foremost, saying players are reluctant to return, I don’t want that to be perceived as a snowflake mentality, it’s more about being worried about the people that we’re going home to. Everyone’s in different situations and has different people at home, with illnesses, pregnancies or children.”

When the Premier League was first suspended back in March, Klopp himself said that football wasn’t important compared to people’s health. Liverpool fans, by and large, backed their manager on that stance.

The longer that the suspension has gone on, the more impatient the Anfield faithful have become about a return. Klopp has gone silent on the issue too, perhaps realising now that his own supporters are so desperate to win the title that they want to see him and his players risk both their own and their families’ lives.

If Klopp, Jordan Henderson, James Milner or Virgil van Dijk turned around and said they didn’t want to play because of the risks associated, they could become public enemy number one with the red half of Merseyside.

Their feats on the pitch over the past two seasons should really incubate them from that sort of reaction, but lest we forget this is the same fan base who sent death threats to Loris Karius for the crime of making a mistake in a Champions League final.

It’s little wonder that players and clubs across the Premier League are reluctant to be upfront and honest about their feelings.

They would rather stay silent, only say what they feel privately in crunch meetings and let the likes of Brighton and Murray take the heat for publicly stating what the rest of the Premier League secretly believes.

Which actually makes you proud to be a Brighton fan. The Albion have been exemplary in their response to the unprecedented situation – giving food to the homeless, offering the NHS free tickets when football does resume, supporting local charities and most recently with season ticket refunds for the final five games of the 2019-20 season.

Brighton have also led the way in their communications. They are the only Premier League club offering a weekly press conference still, carried out via Zoom.

And they are the only ones prepared to speak frankly on the challenges surrounding the resumption of the season, knowing that it is going to spark a meltdown and all kinds of accusations from vast swathes of the footballing public.

The ironic thing about all this of course is that at no point have Brighton ever said the Premier League season should be cancelled.

Those who shout loudest about attempts to avoid relegation conveniently ignore that; Brighton, Barber and Murray have all said that the season needs to be completed, it is just a case of doing so only when it is as safe as possible.

The Bundesliga has led the way in that regard this weekend, although there are clearly differences between the two countries. Most notably, Germany has had a fraction of the deaths that the United Kingdom has suffered, thanks to competent government, vigorous testing, an earlier lockdown and a superior health service which is properly funded.

We are at least a month behind the Germans in our response. Based on that, English top flight football could return in mid-June, presuming there is no second wave or further complications in this country.

Until then, Brighton will keep saying it as it is. Wouldn’t it be nice if some of the others in the Premier League grew a pair and joined the Albion in doing so before football returns?