Time to cheer the Albion to even greater heights

As film or TV scripts go, it would have been rejected as a bit too “on the nose”… a little too over the top.

A record Premier League win, putting five goals past a team that lifted the trophy within the past six years. Fourth in the table after six games, splitting the “Big Six”.

One game away from potentially topping the table. A team brimming with confidence despite losing three leading players. A fan base daring to dream of European football.

Then within a few hours on an otherwise quiet Thursday, the Palace game is postponed. The club’s most successful and popular head coach is poached by American money to a “bigger club” below us in the table.

He takes with him not only his own backroom team who he brought to Brighton, but our longstanding goalkeeping coach and the club’s legendary “El Capitan”, a key figure in mentoring new, young, Spanish-speaking signings.

More national events intervene on this now not-so-quiet Thursday. We are to go nearly a month without a game. And seemingly every leading player is on the verge of being lured away in a transfer window that doesn’t open for months.

Open social media and search for Brighton and every result talks about Chelsea, Graham Potter, Bruno… you get the picture.

It feels like the ground has opened up under the Amex, and the high we had all nervously come to enjoy has turned into a plunging low, exacerbated by the national mood of mourning for the late Queen.

The latter of course infinitely more significant, but you cannot separate people’s feelings over things that are important to them.

Fans are disappointed, angry, betrayed and frustrated. Yet again it is money, not results on the pitch, that see the wealthier clubs put down a challenge from an interloper into their de facto Super League.

Brighton threatening to gatecrash the top six? They could not have that, so they bought the coaching team delivering success to stop us breaking into their party.

The messages released through the Albion website from our departed gaffer and via Instagram from our retired skipper will have soothed the fever of some, but not all.

Unlike the last change of head coach, this isn’t the plan of Tony Bloom or Paul Barber. There is no new coach lined up as there was with the transition from Chris Hughton to Potter.

The bookies favourite has changed daily to reflect this. From Ange Postecoglou to Kjetil Knutsen to Franck Haise to Bo Svensson.

We are now a club that is an enticing prospect for a new manager. Despite some of the candidate’s statements on being committed to the projects at their current La Liga or Ligue 1 side, leading a club in the top six of the biggest league in the world is a position many of them will be competing for.

10 years ago the Albion board had to entice managers to the Amex. Now we are a prize to be won by some of the best up-and-coming coaches in Europe.

Let us take a deep breath. We need to stop looking back at what may or may not have happened in the past few weeks or months as Todd Boehly hatched and executed his plans. Nowt we can do about that, as they say at The Leeds United.

We are still fourth in the Premier League. Wherever we end up after this weekend with no game whilst others in the league play, we will go to Anfield with a game in hand and a new coach looking to make a big impression on the Premier League on one of its biggest stages.

If Potter has left any kind of legacy at the club, it will be in the belief and resilience of the players. Influenced by Adam Lallana and Lewis Dunk, they can bounce back.

It would be easy to slide back to mid-table or to the relegation battle, where so many fans of our opponents – and some pundits – feel is our “rightful place”. #TeamsLikeBrighton.

We as fans can sit in our comfortable Amex seats and moan about the Chelseas, Newcastles and the rest. About their bottomless funds and the inevitability of it all. Easy to do (I will probably do it, as one of those older East Upper types we hear so much about…).

Or we can dig deep and find the kind of belief that 25 years ago helped save the club from non league football and financial oblivion. It matters what we, the fans, think and do.

The mood at the stadium on October 8th when Spurs rock up looking to put another boot in to our hopes of a top six finish will be infectious.

Whoever the new head coach is, they need to feel the welcome and support from the stands. They have to believe they have made the right decision upping sticks to England with their entire family.

The players need to be lifted too. They need to feel we have confidence in them. That we believe they can still grab one of those European places – and that they don’t need to leave for Manchester or Merseyside or London to do it.

For all our gripes about the club over ticketing, catering and other aspects of how the Albion is run, the team at the top need to know we are behind them too.

We thought sacking Chris Hughton was a gamble we would lose, but we went higher. We lost Dan Ashworth and we carried on. We lost Dan Burn, Yves Bissouma, Marc Cucurella, Neal Maupay and we prevailed.

There were always going to be challenges this season. Injuries, winless runs, suspensions, more departures. The loss of Potter is probably one of the biggest challenges any of us could imagine the Albion facing; it was certainly the thing I feared most.

As a club we have been through worse. In the broad sweep of our history this is a setback, not a catastrophe. The road ahead can still lead to bigger things, greater success.

We can wallow or we can sing the club on to new heights. We’ve suffered a defeat, a knock back. We go again. We stand or fall. Up the Albion.

Warren Morgan @WarrenBHAFC