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 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.