Premier League, August 19 2017
Scanners beeped on the turnstile, the last few hundred fans bowled in, a roar immediately surged. Leicester had scored, and this didn’t feel like one of those days when the opener would herald a barnstorming Albion rebuke.
It’s easier to say in hindsight, but within minutes it was clear the team were well off the pace of play and speed of thought around them, apart from Bruno, who had an excellent afternoon down the right with a composed display of fine passing, and, later, Knockaert, who repeatedly charged towards the penalty area with a verve no-one else could summon. Our best player is still being eased back into the team after injury, and came on too late, well into the second half, after Leicester’s most noticeable player, Harry Maguire, had headed in too easily within ten minutes of the restart.
It was by no means a terrible Albion performance – the early goal aside, this was as respectable as the show against Man City. Leicester have miles better players than ours. City always had monolithic centre-backs in the Championship, but Maguire appeared particularly massive, belying his giant frame to repeatedly play the ball out comfortably alongside the equally confident Wes Morgan.
Dunky, by contrast, couldn’t seem to stop missiling long balls closer to the back of the stands than the channels, and Mat Ryan was conspicuous for the saves he didn’t make. Stockdale would possibly have pulled off a wonderstop for at least one of the goals, albeit in exchange for a rick at a less threatening moment.
Up in the stands, there was the kind of sea change in atmosphere that always seems several times more likely when Albion have a big away game.
It goes like this: a reasonable proportions of fans on either side exchange signals and chants which are just aggressive enough to make everything feel a tiny bit uncomfortable, with just the right amount of singling out across thin partitions. Someone, for reasons that can only be known in the deepest recesses of hammered homophobes, shouts something laughably homophobic, at which point the security staff might still not get involved, except for the fact that the people doing it are so batshit that by this point they’re unwittingly doing everything they can to make themselves heard and seen.
The stewards, who have already filmed enough evidence, pluck out the homophobes, at which point a wearying and familiar slow dance occurs in which ruddy-faced men angrily protest a deluded innocence to the point of nearly lashing out at people who have had ten fewer pints and ten years more training in combat situations than them.
There remains a pretty thick line between what is and isn’t accepted among football supporters. Is education the answer? Possibly, but if you don't know the difference between bantz and bigotry by middle age, a handy guide probably ain't gonna help. It's just a tedious occasional part of an away trip, like the generations of angry onions in passed-down Stone Island affecting mockney tribalism and bemoaning "birds" in between calling out other Albion fans on the trains.
It deflects from the broadness and brilliance of Albion's support on an awayday. It's boring, nothing more, and public indignation is more likely to reinforce stereotypes of fans rather than rid grounds of dying prejudices, which should disappear further if any of those security cameras were working.
Or maybe these assumptions just reflect the privileged vantage point of being part of an extremely tolerant set of fans. What do we know? Only that Saturday was a weirdly great awayday, and we've got two of the division's form teams next. Good luck to us.
The first three matches of Albion’s first season in the top flight, in 1979, provided a point-free welcome to life with the best. It was all over by half-time: two Alan Sunderland strikes adding to a long-range strike from Frank Stapleton.
Come May, Albion survived comfortably, even though the two away games which followed, echoing the fixture list pattern this season’s squad will begin with, also ended in defeats. In 2017, such comparisons are pointless in all but Albion’s likely opening experience: trepidatious, optimistic and probably well beaten.
We see Man City’s players purely on television, with the understanding that they are multimedia commodities, faraway stars rather than tangible entertainers. There is almost a technical impossibility to a club like the Albion appearing in the Premier League, so imperative is the need for clubs operating there to be abstract business entities rather than living, breathing organisations.
Clingers to City’s business – Swansea, Bournemouth, Burnley, West Brom – are temporary side-pieces to the bill most of the world actually wants to see, so our league position is always going to feel like a novelty from now on. The potential for confusion this season is considerable. It doesn’t, nor necessarily should it at the prices charged, come naturally to supporters to consider themselves insignificant. There’s a sense that life around the Albion has changed forever, like a till worker winning the lottery, thanks to the ineffable sums of money association with the Premier League brand confers.
Timing, as Bloom understood in his managerial decisions during the final season outside of a commercial stadium, is all-important: a few years ago, Bradford and Blackpool could join and then leave the Premier League without much lasting impact beyond a ruinous trajectory inflicted by ill-judged leadership.
The latest reality is that everything grows further apart as the club becomes a larger constellation in which the newest parts require the most immediate nurturing, the few thousand who contributed during days we’d all now rather forget considered less worthy of particular attention than they’d ever have wanted anyway. Even in a few years, with the market potentially becoming more combustible, this might not remain the financial case for newly-promoted clubs.
Sometimes it is nicer to feel a sense of control over the direction the club takes. Remembering the days when the club was dependent and often seemed figuratively powered by the fans, it’s strange to think of the space in which the Albion now finds itself. Any fan, no matter how much they care, becomes an indiscernible dot in the context of such enormous attention on the club. The chance to witness all this is odd, incredible, alluring and distancing all at the same time, and can only be healthily balanced, you suspect, with the occasional visit to games in more normal divisions at clubs which rely on a closer relationship with a smaller number of people.
Meanwhile, the hope at our end of the table is disarmingly similar to the other end of the scale: we want a genuine competition, without great points gaps leading to foregone conclusions before the fun has begun. City have a new keeper to integrate, and any moments in which they are made to look mortal at Falmer should be applauded. Whether or not they’re out of sight by half-time, it's unlikely to be the most intriguing game of an Albion season certain to be surreal.
Nearly here, isn't it? So exciting. We cut to the chase and asked Albion fans what they were looking forward to after a long summer of fun. Here's what they said.
"I do a bit of work in the club’s commercial department, so of course I’m looking forward to seeing our magnificent fans, who’ve been terrific over the past few seasons, enjoy watching some of the world’s finest footballers visit the Amex. They deserve it, and I can’t wait to see their beaming vein-strewn faces. Just joking, of course! Although I am genuinely excited to see whether the mugs who pledged £6,000 plus VAT towards sponsoring Richie Towell’s shorts actually pay up."
Eddie Ednut, Woodingdean
"All of it. The Premier League – it’s the best league in the world, isn’t it? You want to test yourself against the best. Manchester City will be a great first game. I think we’ll probably lose that one. Real rags to riches, though. We’ve got much less money than them. And how about Palace home and away? It’s a rivalry. And all the big stadiums – they’re really big. Tony Bloom. He’s our chairman. You couldn’t ask for a better chairman. The new signings look great. I don’t know if some of the older players will cut it in the higher division, though. If we finish 17th, that will be an amazing achievement, but if we get relegated, we have to take it on the chin. We could stay up or go down. I can’t wait to buy a programme."
Marge Mundane, Southwick
"I’m looking forward to being #Together. The Albion is a curse and an affliction, but god bless me, I keep going. I could have travelled round the world twice by now, but I’ll look back and have 16 coffee table books about the stadium and every DVD the superstore has ever barfed out, and that’ll do me. I’m part of something. Part of something bigger. I soldier on because the club needs me. They made that clear with the free packet of ready-salted crisps they paid for at Middlesbrough. Who else will buy a ticket in the first round of sales for Exeter away in the cup? I was actually thinking about voluntarily missing a couple of games and going on a date or something a couple of seasons ago, but then I got an automated email from the club thanking me for travelling 6,000 miles that season, and I was so touched that I’ve carried on. It’s the hope that kills you."
Adam Dammit, Lewes Road
"My name’s Josh and I’m seven years old. Is this BBC Sussex? My favourite Albion player is Wayne Rooney. Will you give me a toy?"
Josh, 7
"On a personal note, I’m looking forward to going on a couple of podcasts, carrying on my column in the Portslade Puffin and being Sky Sports’ go-to rentagob when they need someone in a half-and-half scarf to say something completely inconsequential on behalf of Albion fans. It’s been two years since I bought three East Stand tickets for me and my kids on a whim after a bottle and a half of Prosecco one Sunday afternoon, and I’m so glad I stuck with it. I used to hate supporting Chelsea."
Heather Hairhorse, Portslade
"I know this is well controversial, but I don’t give a stuff, to be honest with you. I couldn’t care less and I won’t be smiling at Old Trafford, even if we get a late equaliser. Things just ain’t what they were. Peterborough at Gillingham in 1997, 68 people there, chips for 70p, giving Valur Gislason a lift home – those were the days, mate, not now. The club needed us, none of this spending the debt of a small country on potentially world-class midfielders. Hartlepool away, the only away win of the great escape season, I was there, having a fag up the top of the stand, hurling abuse at Hangus. Denny Mundee shook my hand at the end, asked me if I wanted a game. Just banter. The game’s gone now."
Terry Rednose, Angmering
"I’ve been coming to the Albion since 1948."
Valerie Pensionbook, Bexhill-on-Sea
"I’m looking forward to seeing my mates again. We go to every game, home and away, no matter what the cost, and we always get there for opening time after a few 3am warm-up beers on the train, just to make sure we forget how utterly joyless the whole rigmarole essentially is. We’re pretty close: I went to one of the boys’ weddings in the summer. There was a brief hitch where the bar hadn’t opened yet and we had almost nothing to say to each other, but by the end we were reminiscing about the time we accidentally double-ordered a Whopper Meal at Bradford and fell down some stairs three years ago. My wife left me over the summer. It feels like a fresh start."
Paul Pork, Burgess Hill
