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

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.