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Brighton Fan View: I'm getting angry...what exactly was it people expected from Albion?
Reading some of these so-called half-term reports about Brighton’s progress in the Premier League has made me quite angry.
Assessments in certain media outlets suggesting Brighton are doing under-par is simply lazy writing by journalists used to dining at the top table of football’s elite division alongside the likes of the Manchester clubs, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool and probably based on the fact that we have won just one of our last nine games.
I would ask, what did people really expect? Brighton had 21 points at the halfway stage – now 21 from 20 games after the Boxing Day defeat at Chelsea – and that is an achievement, not a case of falling short.
READ MORE: 5 things we learned from the Premier League
Chelsea v Brighton – how the Boxing Day clash unfolded
At the start of the season we were everyone’s favourite to go straight back down to the Championship along with Huddersfield – based on both being new boys to the Premier League and having the two smallest spending capacities of the 20 top-flight teams. The fact that Brighton suffered unexpected setbacks on bringing in a striker before the August transfer window closed only served to lesson our chances for the season ahead.
I always believed a ‘point-a-game’ scale would be the way to keep a level head in assessing our season and at the moment we are doing really well with five wins and six draws. The only time we have been thrashed was a 5-1 defeat at home to Liverpool, whose attacking options have caused major problems for far better teams that Brighton. In truth, that game could have ended 5-3 if we had taken our chances against Liverpool’s comedy defence and their £75million move for Virgil van Dijk is totally understandable.
In other games Brighton have lost 2-0 to Manchester City, 1-0 at Manchester United, 2-0 at Tottenham and Arsenal and now 2-0 at Stamford Bridge – all respectable scorelines in ‘them and us’ games.
People will rightly say we posed little attacking threat in those matches but we know that and we would do something about it if we could but we do not have a spare £70million stuffed in a jacket pocket somewhere to rectify that. May I remind people that the scorer of Chelsea’s first goal on Boxing Day cost double what our entire squad cost.
Yes, there have been disappointments for Brighton so far, the most notable being defeats at Bournemouth and Huddersfield. Those have to be reversed in the home fixtures, starting with the Cherries on Boxing Day.
In truth, we should still be favourites to go straight back down and I think we will do unless we can pull off some really clever moves with strikers in the pending transfer window, but don’t tell me that sitting 12th in the table with more than a point a game at just gone the halfway stage is below-par.
Read it here, Brighton are doing really well … considering (the latter being a word that some do not take into account).
My own target for the next two games – at Newcastle on Saturday and Bournemouth at home on Monday – is four points. That should be realistic but our opponents will also be seeing Brighton as an opportunity for points so it is not a given. This is the Premier League – a tough, tough league and Brighton are making a fight of staying up, which is something which should be applauded, not criticised.
Finally, a word to say how sad it was to hear on Boxing Day of the death at 64 of Steve Piper, a member of Brighton’s Third Division promotion-winning team in 1976-77 and someone who was playing in the first ever Brighton game I watched.
I had the pleasure of talking with him many times in later years and he was an absolute gentleman. His contribution to Brighton’s history will be remembered fondly and with admiration by many. Let’s hope Brighton can get a result for him in these next two fixtures.
@GriggoHome
