Brighton to host Crystal Palace in FA Cup Third Round

You wait four years to play Crystal Palace, and then you host them twice in two months. Cheers FA Cup draw.

Yes, Brighton and Hove Albion will host Crystal Palace in the third round of the FA Cup in the first weekend of January, with the dust barely settled on the last league meeting between the two.

You don’t need reminding of that one; virgins from Croydon in black hoodies smashing open a fire exit to the Amex and then letting bangers off in the stadium. Taking seats that belonged to genuine ticket holding supporters. Not to mention injuring stewards and their fellow Palace fans, turning up with knives and knuckle dusters and then trying to blame it all on the Albion and police. Oh, and the football was spectacularly shit as well.

Well, we get to go through it all again now. And this time because it’s a cup game, the stadium will have 15% of the attendance as Palace supporters.

Think that’s bad? If it’s a draw – highly likely given both clubs will probably field reserve sides with Premier League safety the priority – we will have the joy of a replay at Selhurst.

A cynic might suggest the draw was fixed as, with a lack of non league sides to add spice to it this year, there are a conveniently large number of local derbies including our game, Liverpool v Everton and Sunderland v Middlesbrough.

There were mixed reactions to the draw at the Albion. Our insider said, “At first, Paul Barber was delighted. He danced around the office singing ‘Money, money, money’ by ABBA and typing figures manically into a calculator.”

“Someone then pointed out the PR disaster that was the last one and he began smacking his head on his desk”

Sussex Police were said to be far less happy with the news than Barber’s initial reaction, with Darren Balkham reported to have last been seen curled up in a dark corner crying to himself,despite the great opportunity it presents to get some more arrests onto the board.

There is no date for the tie yet but we’d suspect all parties involved would want it to be an 8am kick off on a Monday morning. We aren’t sure they are allowed to do that, so expect midday on either Saturday 6th or Sunday 7th January.