Everything Graham Potter and Roy Hodgson said after Albion lost to Palace

Graham Potter: "We certainly had some good chances. There's no criticism, from my perspective, of the boys – they gave everything again.

I thought we were on top of the game, the better team. They didn't do too much to get their goal which was disappointing and against the run of play, but that happens in football, we know that.

If you don't score then you leave yourself open for something of an action. We created enough, we did enough in the game to get something from it, and that's why it feels disappointing and it's a sore one for us.

All the games in the league are difficult – nothing changes from that perspective. Last night you saw the bottom team [Norwich] wins against the third-placed team [Leicester].

It's not about looking at which fixtures are supposedly easier, it's focusing on the next game, try to win. That's what we've tried to do and we'll do the same.

It's disappointing because we've lost and we've lost narrowly and we've lost when we've played, actually, quite well. That's life sometimes, as well. We have to accept it, we can't feel sorry for ourselves.

We have to take the fight, we have to show our quality. That's where we're at. The most important stat is how many go in the back of the net and that's where we fell short today. 

Sometimes luck is a commodity that you need and we didn't have too much of that. Lewis Dunk's header has beaten everybody but it's hit Neal Maupay straight in the face, Solly March had a good chance.

We have to keep focused on the positives, keep focused on what we've done well and we have to keep working. Hopefully we can turn that luck, those margins in our favour – that's the challenge.

[On Zaha being accused of spitting at Schelotto] I didn't see anything, I just heard. I didn't see anything at all.

I'd rather us be talking about football, to be honest, rather than an altercation off the pitch. That's always my answer to stuff but these things happen, that's life.

Results-wise things have [slowed down in the second half of the season]. The margins are quite tight – sometimes they go with you, sometimes they don't.

We've had draws when we feel like we could maybe have had a bit more but, again, that's where the work is. That's the challenge of the job, that's the challenge of the Premier League.

We need to keep working, that's the only answer. We will focus on the next game, the next match, try to prepare as best we can and try to win that. That's the only way we know and that's what we'll do.

You can't pre-plan or predict the games you can do well in or not. You just focus on the next game.

I am confident [of avoiding relegation]. I believe in the players, I believe in what we're trying to do. I believe that we've shown enough today to say that we can win football matches.

We need a bit of luck, something to fall our way, I guess, but there are some qualities there that have been good over the last few weeks, even though results haven't been so positive. 

We've fought back from going behind, which shows resilience; we've created chances and shown togetherness, our defensive qualities as well. We just need to pull it all together and then the results come.

Everyone's emotional after a game because you obviously want to win but I think we've played quite well. I don't think it was a bad performance from us, I don't think we deserved to lose, I don't think Crystal Palace were necessarily the better team.

You need luck. It's football – it's not so easy to control these things. We have to stay positive. We know the fight, we know how tough it is in this competition, we know the Premier League is hard. We're humble enough to know that, and then it's about work.

I've not really thought about the coronavirus, to be honest. [To reporter] Is that a cough?

I trust the club to think about these things more than me. I'm just the head coach and I haven't got any major concerns but of course we have to take the advice from the people who know better.

We wanted to try to have width against Crystal Palace. They're compact, they protect the middle, so we wanted to have two ways to attack them from a width perspective and also make it a four v three in midfield. That was the decision.

I thought Glenn could help us at the back end of the game but Solly did okay. I'm happy with Neal. It's not about the individual, it's about the team – whether we can score.

I think we've scored 32 goals this year so far. We've got ten games to go, we need to score more. We can't just rely on one guy to do that.

As a team, we have to be better at creating chances, at creating more chances, conceding fewer chances. That's a team responsibility. Neal needs a bit of luck – it was a great strike against the keeper that goes straight down his throat, that sort of thing. I'm happy with him. 

It's worrying if the opposition are having chance after chance after chance and you're getting penned back and camped in your own half, but that wasn't the case. I think [their goal] was a long ball, a knockdown and a bit of action which, I suppose, can happen.

Clean sheets help us get points, help us win games and it's something that we'll always be working towards having. As always, football is about the two boxes, and today we were unlucky and we fell short.

Roy Hodgson: "It was a good win but it was a hard-fought game, wasn't it? I think both teams can feel satisfied that they really did give their all to try to get the result.

In a game where it was so competitive, on a heavy pitch with the rain, there were challenges to be made and won. I thought both teams did that in a very fair way, really, so the game never really looked like spilling over, for me, as a result of a challenge or foul.

Of course, we had a very good and experienced referee in Martin Atkinson, who's quick to step in if there were any doubts at any time.

We obviously are delighted because we won the game. I can understand that Graham is probably very disappointed that he didn't. If you can see it from a neutral's point of view, which neither Graham nor I can, I think it was a really hard-fought derby game and both teams deserve some credit for that, as do the refereeing trio.

Last year, Jordan Ayew did a fantastic job because he was on loan for the year. We made that loan permanent at the start of the season because we knew what he is, what he could do.

But of course, last year he didn't score many goals and that was something which bothered him and, I suppose, was a factor for us – are we going to get the goals out of him that we need?

We knew what else he'd give us, but is he going to give us goals as well? And that's what he's started to do this year. He's scored a large proportion of our goals and is still contributing to the team in so many other ways.

His contribution without goals is enormous – that work rate, that desire, that constant thorn in the opposing team's defence, and also the fact that when we lose the ball he's so quick to get back and help us defensively, which is something you need. It's helped us to keep our last two clean sheets.

Too late for me now for leap years, isn't it? I don't think I'm going to get any marriage proposals now, unless my wife wants to propose to me again.

Brighton are a good team, there's no doubt about that. They're not an easy team to play against. I think their team and play is better, if you like, than their current position would suggest.

We knew this was going to be a tough game. In the home game, we were fortunate to get a draw in that game because they were definitely the better team on the night. Tonight it was a much more even game – different, obviously, because they had a lot of the ball at the back.

We forced them, if you like, to play those balls more in their own half. We made it difficult for them to get the ball into the final third, which is where they wanted to be. We, of course, played the ball forward much earlier, relying on the front three that we have, who need the ball earlier.

It was a much more even game but we established quite a lot of control, largely because we defended so well.

When you're a Premier League side, when you start the season, the be all and end all is that you're still going to be a Premier League side. When that is your one and only abiding ambition, I don't know it's really necessary to say 'we'll now change our ambitions.'

I haven't gone into a game with Crystal Palace in these three seasons where the players aren't focused, are taking life too easy or going through the motions. That isn't the type of team or players we have.

I'm happy, really, to sit back and expect that every one of these last ten games will be similar to the previous 28 – and then we'll see how many points that brings us.

Of course, we'd like it to bring us up the table and not slide us down. We'll enjoy every victory and make certain that we keep our feet on the ground, that we enjoy the moment. 

We accept the victory with some sort of humility and then we'll start again on Monday to make sure that when Watford come to Selhurst Park, we're ready for them as well.

[On the Zaha incident] I make nothing of it. For me, we've watched 95, 98 minutes of football and you're asking me to make some kind of comment about something that happened in 30, 40 seconds.

I'm just glad that Wilf didn't lose his head, that's important. If that's the worst thing that's going to happen in a derby game of this nature, then I think people are getting away with things quite well.

Scott Dann always does well when he comes in. He faces enormous competition. Last year, our best two players alongside Wilf were, arguably, James Tomkins and Mamadou Sakho during long periods of time, and then they both got injured.

In came Martin Kelly and Scott Dann and we picked up even more points than we'd been doing. Now we've got Mamadou fit, James fit very soon, so of course the competition is ratcheted up all the time.

He must take enormous credit that every time he gets a chance, he deals with it. His performance for the team was important and that was the case with Jordan last year. People would say 'he's working hard but he's not scoring goals.' But we finished in 11th position with our highest ever points tally.

It's not a question of statistics, it's a question of winning football matches. At the end of the day, there's only one statistic that's ever going to count, for you as a player or manager, and that's how many points your team gets and where you finish in the league.

All the other statistics keep the newspapers and Sky Sports going. For us, that's about the end of it. The statistic that interests me is 'did we win or did we lose?'

[On coronavirus] All we can do is carry on, follow our doctors' medical advice and keep ourselves free from the virus. I don't intend to speculate at all about what may or may not happen, going forwards. I'm just happy to prepare the team until the day when someone says to me 'we have a problem here with this virus and you don't need to play.'"

Glenn Murray: "There are a lot of big teams out"

Albion's sparing use of Glenn Murray in the FA Cup has yielded spectacularly economical returns since he was introduced as a late substitute in the Seagulls' 2-1 win over Crystal Palace in the 3rd round of the competition in January 2018.

Murray has scored four goals in the 67 minutes he has played in the FA Cup since coming on at the Amex Stadium that night.

Three of them have been vital. Murray's 87th-minute winner against Palace was similar to the quick reaction that saw him nudge in Jürgen Locadia's cross within three minutes of entering this replay to put Albion 2-1 up and settle a tricky tie against the 10-man Baggies.

Murray also scored a last-minute winner at Middlesbrough in the 4th round of last season's competition, and enhanced the result for his side at The Hawthorns by adding Albion's third with three minutes to go.

"It's nice to put the tie to bed," said the smiling striker, having received a pass from fellow substitute Davy Pröpper to embellish a late Albion comeback sparked by Florin Andone's clinical 82nd minute leveller.

"Both sides could have done without extra-time. Florin kept us in it at the end and from there we went from strength to strength."

Murray has scored four goals in his last two away games. That tally would have been five in three had he converted a straightforward chance during Albion's 2-1 defeat against Manchester United at Old Trafford last month.

He will be back on home turf in the Premier League against Burnley on Saturday and for the 5th round encounter with Derby County a week later.

"Derby are a good team, just like West Brom are," said Murray. "You look at the draw and there are a lot of big teams out, so it's good to be in it."

Brighton & Hove Albion 0-1 Bristol City (Brownhill 43)

Championship, April 29 2017

One way to ensure the race for the Championship goes down to the wire is to suffer a shock defeat when everyone expects a rollover win. An air of raucous celebration was justified before Albion’s final home game of a magnificent season. What almost no-one had considered was that the team’s brilliantly consistent run at the Amex Stadium would come to an end on the day they had the chance to win the title against visitors who had spent much of the season contemplating relegation.

It wasn’t one of the Seagulls’ finest displays, but they were far less lackluster than they had been in the 2-0 loss at Norwich eight days earlier. Albion enjoyed two-thirds of the possession, but more than a dozen shots off target led the way to an anti-climax.

The wayward shooting began during an uncharacteristically stuttering opening 15 minutes. Murray should have scored when he was allowed to chest the ball inside the box, only to hit a tame half-volley which tumbled comfortably wide. But City were more than the spectators Wigan had often been during the game which won Albion promotion, sending a number of dangerous crosses into the box and taking the lead with an excellent goal just before half-time. Matty Taylor sent Josh Brownhill clear down the right, and his cross at pace returned the favour for an easy header which left the away fans at the Amex celebrating a lead for the first time since Newcastle’s late winner more than two months earlier.

Perhaps Albion would have had it easier if their opponents had been rooted in mid-table rather than chasing their Championship status on the back of a four-game unbeaten run which included three victories. Their goal came at the perfect time, too, stifling the joyous mood around the ground. Things didn’t get much better for Albion in the second half. Jiří Skalák, who had been booked and ineffective, was replaced by Solly March, but the Young Player of the Season struggled to create many openings. Anthony Knockaert, on the other side, had repeatedly deceived his marker down the left during the first half, most notably when he allowed Gaëtan Bong to cross for a Murray header which bounced across the six yard box, just short of Tomer Hemed’s reach.

A City old boy, Sam Baldock, might have made the difference against the club he scored 24 goals in one season for if he hadn’t missed out through injury, and Murray and Uwe Hünemeier should have done much better with the sort of headers they usually bury in front of goal. Lee Johnson’s side were good value for the upset, though. Taylor was inches from scoring again after an hour, narrowly failing to connect with a half-volley from point-blank range, and only a superb save from David Stockdale, getting down quickly to stop Bobby Reid’s shot after the substitute had broken through, prevented them from winning more comfortably late on.

It was impossible not to feel disappointment, but Albion still have the chance to win the division at Aston Villa on Sunday. They will need to take their chances better than this.

Albion: Stockdale, Bruno, Hünemeier, Dunk (Tomori 89), Bong, Knockaert, Stephens, Kayal (Sidwell 62), Skalak (March 45), Murray, Hemed

Brentford 3-3 Albion

Championship, February 5 2017

The thing about possessing genius is that you don't get to summon it automatically. Sometimes it isn't there at all. Sometimes the pieces of you that embody the genius go cold. If Albion were a writer, they'd have suffered a block in this match on a par with the dearth of imagination, say, that sees blogs like this stumble inconsistently on for years and years.

Forty-five terrible minutes - like, mountainous cat sick awful, no point, the motor never running, on that narrow Griffin Park pitch which so often has seemed claustrophobic to them over the years - and then at least another 20 in the second, with a sort of unfocused desperation powered only by the spiralling fumes of a half-time team talk.

As at Preston, sometimes the mood mutates from anticipation to dread at the drop of a line-up before kick-off. Where was Kayal, or Stephens, or even Bong? This team isn’t a jigsaw puzzle – the key players have a subtler influence than that, more like oils through a paint. If they’re off, and people like Skalak and Murphy and the guy from West Brom don’t step up, the bulb is blown into a hundred pieces, flickerless until another day.

Have Brentford ever not had a direct winger with long hair causing trouble for Albion here? An emblem of the oncoming misery, forever surging towards goal and, as is usually the case, the already-fearful travelling support, into the box to meet a ball squared with little interruption by the haplessly scurrying Sidwell and Skalak, and almost apologetically falling into the corner of the net via a little sidefoot, possibly Cruyff-turned effort, soft enough almost not to be a goal but definitely a goal because Albion aren’t up for it and it’s the least their sluggishness from the start deserves.

And then, within ten minutes, another slow goal, nodded on from a corner for a free header at the far post, with Shane Duffy doing an impression of someone who isn’t him at all. At moments like this, you wonder how many people would have stuck or twisted if they’d been forewarned what the score would be at 3.25 and offered a refund and a vortex back to midday Brighton. Despair saps the terrace into a grim mould of raised eyes and when-can-we-leaves. A disproportionate abjectness takes hold, somewhere between muscle memory and PTSD, for everyone who’s witnessed dozens of these type of horrors, heightening the hopeless farce. Murphy clearly isn’t frail, but he seems it because he’s now another iteration of Paul Brooker or Paul Armstrong or some other pale winger, probably on loan during the Gillingham years, who won’t stick a foot in just for the sake of it in times of adversity.

Outside, in the makeshift smoking bit between the gardens, someone reports seeing 15 fans leave at half-time, trudging off past the mega-friendly street drunk-type steward, back into publand: an insane move, obviously, but an act of madness more likely to happen, if ever you were going to do it, on a Sunday when your toes freeze and the Albion have totally cessated.

It’ll be back on if they score, and a warmer, more level-headed view might be that the talent is there to claw something back. Except that Brentford could drive a gilded jeep through the tufts of space in the final third, which is why they’ve won a penalty after a clanking challenge by Uwe, and even if they don’t score it they can score when they want. This is it, we’re going home (we're not), Stockdale’s gone the wrong way, of course. Except that he’s stuck out a leg, cat-like, in a way that suggests he knew the circle of the goal the ball would be blasted at, and now it’s all gone Euro ’96, Seaman keeping the dream alive, the hairpin of a momentum change, and there needs to be a tannoy announcement about how glum and hopeless things seemed against Sheff Weds when this happened.

Recalling what happened next, rationally, is bloody tricky. It would also have been useful to recall how Brentford won quite easily at Falmer, which makes being all ratty about the rottenness of the performance up until Molly Starch’s goal seem even more reactionary. Knockaert, who’d broken into an amusing stroppy gallop after being denied a penalty for handball amid the group sigh of the first half, was trying to make things happen down the right, and at one point, when he gave it the c’mon to his adoring followers before a corner, Chrissy Hoo visibly told him to chill Winstaan. He set up March for the excellent half-volleyed first goal, bringing with it only a can-we-start-playing-please roar.

It felt like massive-headed-equaliser territory. It was one movement, when it came: Duffy, with the same leap to conquer with which he met Knocky’s inswinging cross, ended on his knees in front of the Albion fans, who could – unless they were young and optimistic, which is always possible, I suppose – barely believe Albion wouldn’t concede another one, so obliging was the defence. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here on the edge of the Albion penalty area to yet again let the opposition do exactly as they please, and lo, they have done as they pleased, and it’s a great goal for what must be the winner, socked in sweetly from 25 yards.

Hindsight is a powerful and persuasive mistress: there had been absolutely no way, on the balance of defensive ineptness at both ends, that there wouldn’t be another goal after the scores hit 2-2, but no-one foresaw double the dementedness. Wonderfully, Brentford played themselves: imagine being enough of a cheat to endanger players in the future, by spending ages on the floor claiming dismemberment, fooling the ref out of minutes in a way which, the more it happens, will make officials the length of the land doubt whether players really have been zonked out. Anyway, stuff morals for a minute longer: a slightly desperate attack down the left from March was semi-repelled, then Norwood’s attempt to create pinball with a weak header back in was cleared, and then the ball got pushed out to Knocky, whose marvellous cross towards Hemed was fully enabled by the complete lack of any marking from Brentford.

In a way, this was the end the game deserved: 97 minutes, and it did feel like it had gone on forever, mainly because Albion had been so unrecognisably bad for most of it, which might explain why Hemed, who’d only replaced Murray 25 minutes earlier, simply narrowed his brow and ran back to the centre circle with the ball. If this is the last time Albion go to Brentford for a while, and there’s no certainty of anything if this show was a preview of the rest of the season, it was quite a way to swansong. But anywhere who was there will need the highlights to piece together what happened.

Skills and the tutelage of Alexis Sanchez - Chuba Akpom joins Albion from Arsenal as a creator for the Championship finale

Albion have gone for speed, bags of tricks and enthusiasm with the only new addition to their squad. The Chubatron is highly rated to the tune of a £25,000-a-week contract from Arsène Wenger, and he says he’ll play anywhere to rack up the minutes – not least likely, it seems, the left wing, where he’s been occasionally deployed by his parent club during EFL Cup games and in pre-season, when he was at his most prolific.

At 21, Akpom has grown up as an admirer of Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink, Alan Shearer, Patrick Kluivert and the Brazilian Ronaldo, and is experienced at all levels of England and Arsenal’s pretender ranks.

“He’s capable of creating things on his own – he doesn’t rely on chances being created for him,” Gareth Southgate, the England manager, said of Akpom, following a 3-0 win against Kazakhstan 15 months ago, in which he scored on his under-21s debut.

“His work out of possession was very good. He’s a confident player. He’s got ability. He just has to keep progressing.”

Southgate was impressed by Akpom’s on-loan performances at Hull last season, including a debut goal against Huddersfield - who his first appearance for Albion might come against - in what would become a promotion season.

It took him more than two months to score again, and a further eight games to score the only goal of a win against Bolton. All of his league goals were home ones, but his cup goals were all away: one at Accrington and a hat-trick at Bury.

Although he never dropped out of the picture at Hull, Akpom is essentially unproven. The signs are promising, though: Jürgen Klopp wanted to sign Akpom during his reign at Dortmund, and the man he succeeded at Liverpool, Brendan Rodgers, was openly interested in signing him two years ago.

Commitment will be key here. Akpom’s heart seems to have remained very much in north London during his brief, goalless loan spells in 2014 and 2015, when he flitted between training at the Emirates and playing for Brentford, Coventry and Forest.

He has experience of a top-of-the-table promotion push with the Bees. “It was different to what I’ve been used to,” he said, admitting some surprise at the physicality of the lower divisions three years ago.

“Getting the three points is huge at senior level. To be top of the league is such a big thing, and it was really exciting to be part of it all.”

His pedigree, if his goals and assists for Arsenal’s youth and reserve sides are anything to go by, also promises much. In training, he is inspired by Alexis Sanchez. “He makes me want to work a lot harder to reach his level,” he says. “It’s really motivational.

“The Championship is a tough league. You’ve got to have good fitness and be mentally prepared.”

A now-permanently signed Glenn Murray should guide him through the battles of an opening stretch of fixtures where he will need to combine robustness with his undoubted creativity, and he also offers a quicker option upfront if Baldock continues to miss out through injury.

There isn’t tremendous pressure on Akpom to score goals. For club and player, it’s a low-risk signing and, potentially, just the extra striker needed for the run-in.

Albion 2-1 Sheffield Wednesday

Championship, January 20 2017

It takes supernatural commitment, a kind of tenacious faux-dependency, to purely connect to football these days. Watching millionaires, spiritually divided from the mob by galaxies, and wondering if they might have the motivation to somehow care, feels more like going to the circus than fanning. Look, everyone wants the players to be as human as they are in the PR videos (“smile, Glenn! Make eye contact!”), but the reality is they’re a bunch of rich athletes, performing for fame and fortune, and most of us are out of shape potatoes trying to imbue meaning into our lives through a costly vicarious yearning.

Anyway, there are games when it becomes comfortingly difficult to remember what a pointless form of belonging football provides, and this – magnificent, bewildering, heroic and convoluted – was one of them. In that way that the seasons inexorably blur into one another, it seemed like years since Wednesday’s visit in May, their fans all ruddy and Yorkshire and ready to drive through the night to get back to work in the morning, powered by the fumes of a date with Wembley. Look who’s laughing now, we might have thought, if they didn’t seem capable of throwing some witch doctor curse on Albion, like when half the squad expired in the semi at Hillsborough.

There might, you feared, be few better teams to extend the tame loss at Preston into consecutive nil points, but then there is Knockaert, the epitome of a player, with all his flailing and moaning at the officials, who you’d detest if he was against you. It’s all fine, because he can get the ball just outside the area, as he did here from a diagonal Hemed pass as part of one of Albion’s grease lightning breaks from their own box, and pull off an impossible balanced sprint which perfectly keeps the ball just beyond whoever tries to stop him, ending with a goal.

There were several elements leading up to Knocky blasting it into the roof of the net which escalated the improbability of the goal: Norwood only just made the clearance which provided Hemed with the ball, and then Hemed underhit the pass, as good as it was, making Knockaert overhit his first touch. Kieren Westwood, the Wednesday ‘keeper, thought he could rush out and gather the ball. Like the entire stadium, he’d underestimated Knocky’s squirrel-like foot speed, and now Knockaert was away, making three defenders dive in their own idiocy, an unstoppable French fireball wheeling, It’s a Knockaert.

The law of the universe dictates that, sometimes, something so brilliant in a game has to be counterbalanced by a daft calamity. A Foristieri cross was met by the flying foot of Norwood, running towards his own goal, to divert it onto a Dunk header – #tbt, it’s a Dunk disaster – which sailed past the already-grounded Stockdale. The timing, right on half-time, was horrible, but the panic didn’t really churn in until another cross, in the 64th minute, led to a shot which caused Glenn Murray to use his hands as a means to avoid decapitation. Technically it was a sending off, but a penalty would have been sufficient punishment, perhaps as a nod to the human right to avoid being knocked out cold. Still, off he went.

It was such a dismal few seconds that you could only have surpassed the feeling of imminent catastrophe if the goalmouth had promptly burst into flames, scorching Knockaert’s gloves while a terrified ballboy desperately tried to extinguish it with a bottle of Lucozade. And then Stockdale (can we call him Save-it Stopdale from now on? Is it possible we could pun this anywhere at all?) rescued fate from the furnace of yet another disappointment against Wednesday, first diving, athletically, to his right to save the penalty, and then producing a follow-up save, the other way, which could only have been more remarkable had he caught the ball and raced down the other end to smash home in front of the North.

Nothing – sunshine, rainbows, fivers falling from the sky – would have been a surprise at this point. Albion were a man down but with their tails up – Murray had been relatively quiet, and all the momentum was theirs. Pocognoli has hardly played this season, but his cross, a glistening arc of solid gold assist, swung beautifully for Knockaert, diving in at the far post, unleashing delirium.

Wednesday, understandably, completely lost their heads at this point, like in Sunday League when you’re knackered and losing agonisingly and bristling with frustrated testosterone. Fletcher, who’d only been on the pitch for half an hour, did that head-shoving thing that footballers count as a headbutt on Stephens. McManaman ran in like the gnarliest back-up guy you’ve ever seen, Stockdale started shoving him in some kind of muted northern royal rumble, Stephens protested. Fletcher was sent off. Just in case that wasn’t funny enough, Hutchinson then flew in two years late on March – if ever his recovery from injury needed testing – in an act that might not have kept him on the hallowed turf even if he hadn’t already been booked.

That was that. What a time to be alive. To recap: no, let’s try to piece it all together in our own time, on Saturday morning, with the telly highlights. Some joke about Wednesday getting revenge in this year’s play-offs seems appropriate but disingenuous. Lady Luck, not least in terms of other teams’ results, has spoiled Albion for a rare six months, to the point where only a brilliant collapse will stop them.

Albion 2-0 MK Dons

FA Cup, January 7 2017

There was a time, recently enough to remain memorable, when a plus-11,000 crowd for an Albion home game would have been remarkable. Now the FA Cup’s been indelibly devalued, with its silly kick-off times and indifferent Premier League clubs on the road to a Wembley which hosts semi-finals and charges a tenner for a sandwich. There was no getting around the fact that this was a low turn-out in reflection of that, with the North Stand looking all strange and empty and the upper echelons of both sides reduced to ghost towns, like an echoey reminder of how crucial promotion was in the final season at Withdean.

It wasn’t just weird because of the unpopulated stands: there was also a yawny passiveness among the crowd, apathetic like zoo visitors or swimming pool spectators, a slumbering hum without a chorus. But then there is the counter thought that goes: why is there this chasm between league and cup crowds at Falmer these days? Who are the people who want to watch the team based on the opposition? And do they really want to spend a Saturday doing something else while the rest of us suckers sparsely people a muted stadium? Really, what else are you going to do on the first Saturday of the year? Go to pubs with the same people you go to pubs with every weekend, sitting in silence, tapping at your phones in the pub where you've all notified the world you are, occasionally laughing awkwardly at bants? Go shopping and traipse joylessly around spending even more than you do at football? Probably would have been better than getting the birthday shout-out someone got at this game, of all games, when there’s nothing special about the day at all.

This was the day when swarthy magician Beram Kayal returned, though. He didn’t waste any time. Breaking the silence with less than ten minutes gone, he strode to meet a ball just outside the box and crisply skimmed it into the bit of the net nearest the MK Dons fans. They must have felt like the Colchester fans at the EFL Cup game in August: following a side average to its core, never really looking like winning, offers nothing of the dare-to-dream stuff the cup is still just about marketed on, as Albion fans know. They possessed quite an entertaining figure in Chukwuemeka Aneke, a highly physical and energetic striker who, having turned Sam Adekugbe on the edge of the box, hit a shot at Maenpaa that would have been considered weak in the warm-up. Then he treated Hünemeier’s head much like a basketball hovering over a net when they leapt together in front of the mass wake that was the West Stand. Sidwell burrowed around under the belly of an MK player who fell over the ball before clasping it like a pot of long-lost treasure. Once it had been retrieved, Hemed smashed it against the keeper - he sometimes chooses the least effective option at the simplest of angles - from an Adekugbe cross.

Jamie Murphy and Richie Towell were part of the attack, both taking a day off the sunbed, and Murphy volleyed just wide after March performed one of the most meggy nutmegs ever on his marker. Then Hemed replaced nutmeg man as the most embarrassed player on the park by absolutely shanking from point blank range when three Albion players roved behind enemy lines. At this point, in the second half, Albion were firmly into making-hard-work-of-it territory, with the thought of a midweek in Milton Keynes if anyone made a howler providing just enough motivation to perform. There was a five-minute period during which the team needed to, in a manner of speaking, check themselves before they wrecked themselves, culminating in two attacks down the left from the Albion: Adekugbe stuck in a cross which March volleyed well over first time, Jamie Murphy dribbled to the near post byline before tapping back for a last-gasp MK clearance, and then a looping Goldson header from the resulting Murphy corner hung narrowly over the bar.

Towell broke away down the right to zero effect, but the Israelis were here to save the day. Kayal floated in a beauty of a cross, it all went slow-mo as everyone pondered the disappointingly thinkable of Hemed not nestling a simple header into the far corner, and then he promptly did the business. Actually, he should have had another a minute later thanks to the accommodating and increasingly porous Dons defence, but he shot straight at the keeper after being played in by Murph.

Everything was better now, not least because Skalak and Murray were warming up in front of the West, like lions in bibs. Kayal went off after 77 minutes, departing down the tunnel with his halo, a magnificent visionary, taking with him any real remaining interest in the game. Let’s start again next week, and avoid any more tedious home draws in the rest of whatever cup run we might have.

Albion 2-0 Leeds United

Championship, December 9 2016

It's always Leeds on a Friday night recently. Aggro on the trains and a loud away end regaling us with Marching on Together. They used to sack managers after the ignominy of losing to little Brighton. The best underdogging occurred when Gary Hart scored the winner against them in a game at Withdean, there hanging a prevailing sense of shared bemusement at seeing a team of Leeds' faded glamour turn up at everyone's least favourite athletics track and field.

Nowadays they routinely yield to the good guys, and there’s so little justifying description about this game. The stats – Albion had nine for each of Leeds’s two shots on goal – succinctly articulate the level of dominance enacted.

The first goal happened when Kalvin Phillips channelled Rod Thomas’s bygone volleyball heroics, vainly lolloping the ball out just as it was about to cross the line, like a tipsy holiday-maker in a deep pool trying to scoop a beach ball pelted at him at point blank range. A line of Albion players gleefully appealed in unison across the six yard line, led by Dunk, who was thoroughly over-excited having protracted the leg which tonked Knockaert's deep corner goalwards from beyond the far post.

Murray, god of goals in front of the north, glanced over his shoulder at the ref with a doleful, would-you-care-for-me look, paused and banged it in the net. The rest of the game was essentially a concentrated victory lap. Leeds were there. They were robust. They had a midfielder born in 1998 called Ronaldo Vieira (his twin brother is called Romario), which probably softens the blow for their fans. Stockdale, a dream in a dark shade of salmon, had the odd bit of penalty area admin to do, but could have spent the game farting out fear is a liar tweets on his phone if he'd wanted to.

That's five goals Albion have conceded in the second half all season now. Two were at Newcastle and Reading, one was a 95th minute consolation for the home side at Hillsborough, and one of the others was for Preston in injury time at Falmer.

Right at the fizzled end of 2016, Hemed’s gone all 90s garage and got his squad number shaved into the side of his hair, the natural conclusion to which should be Nike capitalising on the chance to recreate the eternal fashion of the barbered swoosh on the bonce of Israel’s finest striker. Hemed had replaced Glenn, who got Man of the Match, and was thus the man for the job when Dunk probably dived to win a penalty.

There was a bit of cosmic rebalancing there, involving as it did the same kind of innocuous tangle from which Dunk conceded a laughable penalty when Albion drew at Burnley last season. No hassle for Hemed, who sent it straight down the shoot, as if he had more pressing matters on his mind, like hanging out with Miss Israel or getting more signs swooshed into his scalp.

And now here we are, eight points beyond third, stronger than last season but without two other sides having mindblowing years. It's a position from which, statistically, everyone ends up spraying champagne and wheezing dizzily, unless they've got Kevin Keegan in charge.

If nurses were observing the wellness of the other promotion hopefuls, they'd be thinking about the necessity of the life support machine. It's not arrogant to say that, unless you're actually being arrogant, which probably isn't in your nature if you're an Albion fan. If this gravy train derails it'll be no surprise, everyone will laugh and sigh and the resigned bitterness will flow once more.

The thing is, Kayal – the player who really brings the Other amid a lot of consistency and workmanship – is yet to come back. Hünemeier and Goldson haven’t even been in the side all season. The innate Albion anxieties still tangibly linger: disbelief, and a suspicion there'll be some sort of stipulation that the team automatically enters the play-offs no matter how stratospheric its points total. Even when the situation’s outlandishly promising, fear often isn’t a liar. It's just nowhere to be seen with 20 games gone.

Luton Town 2-1 Brighton & Hove Albion, Friendly, July 23 2016

Expecting to be entertained by a friendly is like expecting to be cerebrally stimulated by reality television. It’s all artificial toiling and coiled shadow-boxing, and going one down after 30 seconds to a soft goal – rolled past Mäenpää in front of 200 distinctly quiet Albion fans, many of whom were still returning from the bar at that point – hardly elevated the thrill.

Dunk atoned for the misplaced pass which had led to the goal with a simple header from an inswinging free-kick at the end of the half, but it was our only attempt on target in 45 minutes. Luton should have been further ahead. They almost were straight after the break, seeing two shots cleared off the line. Apart from Elvis cracking the bar from close range they were well deserving of their win.

The game is about as memorable as a service station holiday, but it would be remiss not to laud the ground. The away end is right next to a residential front door, the stairs overlook rows of gardens and there’s an old-school tea bar near a door which leads to a clubhouse-style bar for away fans with relatively cheap beers.

The shallow stand falls low beneath the pitch and the noise in the enclosed ground is impressive. You can picture Fozzie enjoying his time here in the mid-80s, orange shirt, headband and all. This is the sort of place you end up missing over the course of a Championship season full of visits to sterile, out-of-town stadia. Let the watered-down lager flow.