Will the Ryan agenda be dropped when Brighton offload to Real Sociedad?

Hands up, who has never understood the hate that some Brighton fans have directed at Maty Ryan over the past year? Yes, his form might have deserted him and yes he made some questionable comments in an interview upon moving on loan to Arsenal, but you could be forgiven for thinking that he shot John Lennon the way certain Albion supporters have carried on.

So with Ryan on the cusp of departing for Real Sociedad, will the agenda against Brighton’s former number one be dropped for people to actually appreciate just how important he has been in establishing the club in the Premier League?

The anti-Ryan crowd have done their best to rewrite history. Apparently, Ryan has always been a poor goalkeeper who has cost Brighton points from the moment he arrived. Plainly, that is absolute tripe.

Ryan was worth six or seven points in Brighton’s 2017-18 debut top flight campaign. You could count the number of bad games he had that year on one hand; on the opening day against Manchester City and the 3-2 defeat at Crystal Palace in April.

The highlight of his season came with that last minute penalty save which earned a 1-1 draw at Stoke City, but there plenty of other interventions too.

Even through the haze caused by a 10.30am arrival in Burnley and an average price of £2 a pint, I can clearly recall an outrageous save at Turf Moor.

Ryan and Gaetan Bong had ended up in a heap on the ground in the midst of a goal mouth scramble and when Jack Cork sent the loose ball goalwards, there was nothing between ball and net.

That is until an orange-clad arm appeared out of the pile of bodies, extending itself as if it were a limb belonging to Stretch Armstrong and somehow managed to reach and scoop the ball off the line with millimetres to spare.

In 2018-19, Ryan’s three October clean sheets in three consecutive 1-0 wins went a long way towards survival in a season when Brighton finished two points clear of the relegation zone.

They also earned him the PFA Premier League Player of the Month Award, the only Albion player ever to have won the accolade.

Whilst Ryan was less convincing in 2019-20, he still had a reasonably solid season. His full stretch fingertip save from Jannik Vestergaard’s 25 yard effort which looked destined for the top corner away at Southampton was one of the best stops a Brighton goalkeeper has ever made – not bad for a bloke who was supposed to be either a dwarf or have t-rex arms, depending on who you listened to.

Even Ryan’s most ardent fans would have to admit though that his form dipped dramatically in 2020-21. Nobody can now argue with Graham Potter’s decision to hand Robert Sanchez the gloves in mid-December.

Brighton’s results picked up markedly in the second half of the campaign, two wins from the opening 18 games giving way to seven victories in 20 once Sanchez was installed between the sticks.

Potter went further than simply dropping Ryan for a string of poor performances. Within a few days of Sanchez keeping a clean sheet in his second Premier League start at Fulham, Potter told Ryan that he was welcome to find a new club in the January transfer window.

It was a strange and somewhat harsh way to treat a loyal servant and you could not blame Ryan if he did feel slightly put out by the dramatic turn of events.

Ryan duly did as Potter told him – and it was not just any new club either. He ended up on loan at Arsenal, the team he had supported as a boy. Even though Ryan was only going to the Emirates for five months to provide backup to Bernd Leno, it was still a dream move for him.

It was at this point that Ryan managed to get Brighton supporters’ knickers in a right old twist. Speaking to the Australian media, Ryan said that he always viewed the Albion as a step towards playing for a bigger club and that his move to Arsenal – no matter the strange circumstances which had led to it – had fulfilled those aims.

Whilst football fans do not want to hear players describing their club as a stepping stone, that ultimately is what Brighton are to 95 percent of the men employed by the Albion.

Growing up some 9500 miles away in Australia, Ryan did not dream of playing for Brighton. He probably had not even heard of Brighton, given the Albion would have been mooching around the bottom two tiers when he was kid down under, eating shrimp off the barbie and watching Home & Away.

Ryan wanted to play for Arsenal or another of Europe’s biggest sides, in exactly the same way as Yves Bissouma, Tariq Lamptey and the rest are all aiming to do better than Brighton.

What Ryan said is no worse than putting in a transfer request, something which Lewis “One of our own” Dunk did in the summer of 2015 to try and force a move to the might of *checks notes* Fulham.

Dunk was not panned for it. Neither was Elliott Bennett when he told Tony Bloom he wanted to be sold to Norwich City in January 2011. In fact, Bennett got a standing ovation in the Albion’s next fixture away at Watford in the FA Cup after attempting to leave the club.

Even Florin Andone has been welcomed back with open arms despite telling The Athletic that he never wanted to play for Brighton again after he moved on loan to Galatasaray in September 2019.

Ryan it seems is a special case who people preserve another level of dislike for. What makes it all the more odd is that he clearly cared deeply about Brighton during his time at the club, sprinting the length of the pitch to celebrate goals and often being the last player off at the end as he took the time to hand out kit and chat to kids in the Amex crowd.

There should be no bitterness now as his anticipated departure works out well for all parties. Brighton have replaced Ryan with one of the best young goalkeepers in the Premier League and they get Ryan’s sizable pay packet off the wage bill.

Real Sociedad get themselves a goalkeeper who can be a match winner on his day; his recent performances on international duty with Australia and on the rare instances he was called upon by Arsenal suggest he is capable of rediscovering his best form.

Ryan meanwhile goes to become number one at the fifth best team in La Liga. Some Brighton fans have even been sneering at his destination, as if swapping 16th in the Premier League for a Spanish outfit playing Europa League football in 2021-22 is a downwards step akin to turning out for a pub side in Mid Sussex League Division 11.

For what Ryan has done in a Brighton shirt, he deserves better than this. He should be heading off to Real Sociedad with well wishes and gratitude having played a crucial role in one of the most successful periods in Albion history. Time to drop the agenda?