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.

Alloa Athletic 0-1 Raith Rovers, Scottish Championship, October 17 2015

The mission had originally been to visit Arbroath’s Gayfield Park, consistently lauded as one of the most beautiful grounds in the world and the closest to the sea in Britain. But a farcical ticketing mix-up at a provincial arts centre (as Half Man Half Biscuit might call it) meant the destination needed to be within an hour of Glasgow.

I considered going to watch Motherwell-Celtic, eventually being dissuaded by the suspiciously generic look of their ground, extortionate ticket prices and the fact that it was Mark McGhee’s first game in charge (those later Withdean memories, like welts, will never fade.)

In times of uncertainty, a Saturday coupon and the Football Ground Guide are invaluable. Eventually I struck upon the 19^th century Recreation Park, and the chance literally paid off. Approaching a roundabout near the station, a man in the colours of The Wasps (their emblematic insect bears a camp smile and protruding biceps) met a request for directions by immediately offering me his absent mate’s season ticket before reeling off various tales of his life in a Bruce Springsteen tribute band.

Despite his generous offer of a drinking session after the game, I left his group (and, temporarily, abandoned my cynicism about the state of the modern game) to take in the beauty of this ancient ground with its brick walls, creaking turnstiles, shallow terrace and lovingly-curated club shop. The team, which escaped Championship relegation by overturning a 3-1 deficit on home turf in the final game of the previous season, were faring little better this time around, although they have an ex-Premier League striker in Michael Chopra upfront, who can apparently be seen driving a battered old motor around the town having fallen upon hard times in recent years.

Both teams played neat football. For Raith, Mark Stewart looked clever and pacy, drawing a brave save from the keeper with a thundering half volley straight at him from the edge of the area. He then met a clever diagonal ball to square to Jon Daly, whose dive edged the cross into the jeering home terrace. The female assistant referee received almost non-stop advice from the home fans, with the cry of "you have to give that" regularly audible along with such time-honoured gems as "you've got him in your back pocket, Kyle".

Chopra was invited to be the hero in front of the home fans 15 minutes into the second half, but sent a straightforward header straight at the keeper when unmarked from three yards. A brilliant, lightning run by Michael Doyle down the right then allowed Chopra to chest and volley from the edge of the six-yard box, but a defender got in the way.

Raith missed a simple header from a crossed free kick 15 minutes before the end, and the hardcore nearest the dugouts were fuming with the ref after what they saw as a "fackin’ assault" of a 50-50 collision near the away penalty area. Their mood worsened as Raith grabbed the winner following a foray down the left ending in a fierce shot which the ‘keeper could only palm to Grant Anderson, who finished to the noisy delight of the away enclosure, visible in front of a KFC drive-through.

The highlight of the afternoon, though, was the catering, which included macaroni pies and Bridie pastries. A starchy slither of a potato in a buttered bun more than hit the spot for £1.20. Exceptional stuff.

Exeter 3-3 Stevenage, League Two, October 11 2015

When your entire knowledge of St James Park revolves around the away section – about which the term minimalism could suffice, apart from the time the tiny urinals flooded during one Albion visit – an afternoon in the home end is a glorious shock. Tall, steep and packed, it looked untouched since the 1970s and has the character of a monochrome postcard of George Best shanking past a cram of pipe-smoking elders in duffle coats.

There are looming old cider signs and excellent views over the city if you stand towards the top. A route at the back leads to a tea bar where drinks are £1, pies are £1.60 and an alleyway of barbed wire allows fans to smoke behind the car park. And parked up, ensuring an early kick-off, was a telly van broadcasting this excellent display of League Two football across the world.

A few points separated Exeter from the play-offs and Stevenage from the disaster zone at kick-off, a disparity emphasised when the hosts scored with a free header from Brighton-born former Albion youth team winger David Wheeler after four minutes. Despite missing the genius of Ryan Harley, they doubled their lead when ex-Palarse hotshot Clinton Morrison scored a balletic close-range overhead kick shortly afterwards, celebrating by leading a dance around Stevenage manager Teddy Sheringham, who resembled a foiled wedding crasher in his Sunday best suit.

Imploring his players to calm down might have been a strange call considering their seemingly passive concessions of the opening 20 minutes, but Sheringham was proved right by hindsight. Boro could have capitulated had they panicked – as it was, Dean Parrett curled in a classic 25-yard free-kick five minutes before half-time, starting a period of momentum which culminated in Ben Kennedy heading in the equaliser following a spot of penalty area pinball just before the break. Of the 45 visible Stevenage fans, nine broke into an impressive Poznań dance at this point, although it couldn’t eclipse the appeal at half-time for City fans to help paint the ground during the week, announced with just the right level of charm and pragmatism. Perhaps out of embarrassment, the scoreboard near the away end was never updated to reflect the equaliser.

Paul Tisdale, as it is binding to mention during any report on his team, looked thoroughly dapper in his trilby, and the Exeter manager’s side were reinvigorated when they returned, forcing a clearance off the line almost immediately. Stevenage continued to appear incapable of defending anything inside their own box, bearing the look of a team who could concede at any moment, vulnerable no matter how well they played. Armand Gnanduillet, their French striker loaned from Chesterfield, looked a promising targetman with the rawness of a newborn foal, swiping at cold air when presented with a clear shot on goal from ten yards 15 minutes before time.

Stevenage were duly punished when Wheeler collected a pass on the edge of the area and struck a superb half-volley past ex-Palarse net-picker Chris Day with the outside of his foot. It made them more urgent: Tom Conlon struck the outside of the post with an inspired free-kick, and then Whelpdale raced on to a header dropping from the sky – afforded by some sloppy City play from their own throw-in – to crash a volley into the far corner as a magnificent finale.

Fulham 1-2 Albion, Championship, August 15 2015

Strange sensation the day after this game – parts relief, exhaustion and exhilaration. The river was beautiful, the sky serene, the pitch immaculate and, for most, the beers plentiful at one of the best away games of the season regardless of result, although not least due to fond memories of last season’s unexpected, Jonah-led post-Christmas triumph. Big Uwe started at centre-back in place of Dunk, but had almost nowt to do beyond familiarising himself with his teammates during the first half, when Albion kept the ball so cleverly and calmly that it was reminiscent of the times when they embarrassed Peterborough and Charlton at away games during the championship-winning season under Gus.

Tomer set the tone by sending a shot against the bar from just outside the box following a deft Bruno pass, and then everyone’s second-favourite Spanish right-back repeated the trick after half an hour with a precision cross which narrowly deceived the backpeddling centre-back and allowed Baldock to bury it in front of Fulham’s finest.

A lot of Albion fans were relaxed enough to have joined a beer queue which never got served by the time Fulham scored an entirely surprising equaliser, although it wasn’t undeserved: given a second to shoot, Tom Cairney’s curler gave Dave ‘Banter’ Stockdale about as much chance as a wounded fox running for Tory leadership, showing the kind of class Hughton had warned Fulham’s squad possessed.

Therein lay the trouble that was ahead: Hughton gave Fulham too much respect, and Albion, gratingly, went on the back foot against a team who had been there for the taking. What should have been at least a two-goal win saw a correctable swing in momentum obvious to everyone except, apparently, the Albion coaching staff. Fulham hit the post with a header before Matt Smith – who Hughton had spoken about with quiet nervousness before the game – was denied only by Stockdale’s wonderful tip-over at eyeballing range.

Frustration with the ailing ship was growing in the stands by now. Baldock, Stephens, Kayal and Hemed, who had helped run the show during the first half, couldn’t keep up the energetic harrying which allowed Albion to exert sustained pressure and win the ball back so many times, and March was completely knackered. Hughton, a manager renowned for late substitutions, waited until ten minutes before the end - at least 15 minutes overdue - to refresh the comically tired middle platoon. Albion’s ascendancy could have been restored with greater energy against an uninspired Fulham, but Hughton showed his cards by swapping Baldock and March for a defensive midfielder and a defender (Incenator and Rosenior).

Settling for a draw, on the strength of the first half, seemed wasteful. Then, against the run of play, a JFC pass sent LuaLua towards the edge of the area, tapping it past a clumsy defender for a foul which the referee took his sweet time to confirm as a penalty. The end was unwatchable to most in the away end, in contrast to Hemed, who knocked it in with the ease of a lifelong pitch-and-putt champion sinking a gimme or a sunbather on a Tel Aviv beach ordering a falafel. Betting on a striker who seems immune to the Championship’s pressures to score a few penalties this season could be wise.

It’s hard to distance yourself from a game which had more emotions in 50 minutes than the entirety of last season. The style in which it was done seemed excessively cautious and is certain to shred nerves for the next nine months. Hughton might end up being a victim of setting us up so well if he continues to settle for a point in the way he most pointedly did on Saturday. For the stoic, though, we seem to have sneaked under the radar in terms of having a manager who is an old hand at winning promotion, losing four times all season when he did it with Newcastle. It took Albion until November to get their third win last season. This time it’ll probably happen before the end of August.

Chris Hughton and Joao Carlos Teixeira - post-Ipswich, 21/01/2015

Mark Pougatch: Sounds like a terrific game down there on the south coast.

Chris Hughton: Yes it was. We possibly could have made life a little more comfortable because we put in what was a very good performance, good goals, but we were up against a very good side in Ipswich and they showed why they are in the position they are in.

MP: Did you find a club and a set of players low on confidence when you arrived there?

CH: No, actually I didn't. I think the performances before I got here were close, I don't think there were games where the team was beaten very comfortably. And of course when I arrived we were on the back of a win away at Fulham and a good draw here having been 2-0 down against Reading. So no, I didn't find that – it's a good group of lads and there's ability here. It's just about getting the right formula to perhaps get the goals that we needed.

 

MP: There's ability, there's huge potential as well, isn't there? How far do you think that club can go? 

CH: Well, the infrastructure's there. We have a training facility which is probably, apart from three or four of the Premier League clubs, as good or better than anything else in the country. And of course we have a wonderful stadium here with a 30,000 capacity which will be full to the rafters come Sunday. So absolutely there's potential here and of course the club have been very close in the two seasons before this one. It's quite obvious what their ambitions are looking to the future.

David Pleat: Well done Chris, I'm delighted for you, I thought you might have had a chance tonight. Did you play the same system as you played when you first went there? I saw the Charlton game. 

CH: The only chance that I made was I played Calderon at right side of midfield. I just felt that where Ipswich play a very strong and well-organised 4-4-2 and they're a powerful side with a lot of legs, we needed a little bit more solidness and stability in there. And the young lad Teixeira done very, very well off the front. He's a young lad and a real prospect. He added to that with two goals today.

DP: He's still on loan from Liverpool?

CH: Yes he is, we've got him on loan until the end of the season. He's still developing. What he has in his favour for a young lad and a small lad is he has a physicality about him, which of course you need in this division. If you're able to use that, you want to add goals to your game, and he scored two super ones today.

MP: You'll be looking forward enormously to Arsenal coming down at the weekend and a good test to see how the team's progressing.

CH: Yes, even more so. Today was absolutely the priority for us because we need points in this division, particularly with Leeds winning last night, so tonight was very important. We'll look forward to Sunday even more now because of the result today and, as I said, it'll be a full capacity 30,000 here and we hope we can make a good account of ourselves.

Teixeira told the Scouse Echo: "I'm growing up, I turned 22 recently and I need to get more experience.

"I'm getting stronger, I'm thinking quick – that’s the most important thing in the game – and playing quick. I've been enjoying [my time here] a lot, I've been playing a lot, scoring a few goals, a few assists, and playing a lot of minutes so that's what I want to get experience.

The Championship is a hard league, there are a lot of games. I like the city and I'm really happy with my decision. I was playing at no.10 behind the striker and supporting the striker and looking for the space behind the holding midfielders."

A chat with Jimmy Case - December 2014

Jimmy Case sticks his old black car on a pair of double yellow lines, gets out and changes his mind. He's ten minutes late - insert some clumsy parallel with the Albion and Liverpool legend's tackling here - and for a Wednesday evening when most people are still working, there's a decent queue inside City Books.

Once he's in, most of the talk is about Liverpool: Case went to see them beat Leicester last night, and wonders what, if anything, Mario Balotelli "has between his ears" to have come up with an extraordinarily crass, if possibly unintentionally racist, tweet the previous evening.

Case had none of the modern footballer’s luxuries. “I actually got turned away by Burnley when I was 16,” he rues. “The fella who was youth team coach at the time told me I wasn’t any good.

“That was a fella called Dave Merrington. Well, where did I end up? Southampton. Every single mornin’ I used to pull his shirt, ‘the one that got away, eh?’ ‘Cos I went to Liverpool instead of Burnley and won all them trophies.

“And I never got in Liverpool schoolboys – there was a fella there called Tom Saunders and he turned me away, said I wasn’t good enough. He was only a schoolmaster at that time but he ended up at Liverpool.

“He was the one who asked me, he said, ‘Mr Shankly would like to sign yer.’ I said ‘oh you bloody well want me now, do ya?’, cos he turned me away from the schoolboys two, three years earlier than that. You don’t forget.”

That was in 1974, and 40 years later the moustachioed marvel reckons his autobiography, Hard Case, is worth reading. “I’ll give you the money back if you don’t like it. There are people who’ve read the book twice who’ve never read a book before. There are pictures – it’s not a con, you know.”

Merrington was, at one point, linked with the Albion during our darkest days. In the book, Case talks about the despair of realising what Archer and Bellotti were up to in the mid-90s and Liam Brady - “for my money one of the best managers I had ever worked with” - committing to Uncle Dick's vision, only for One-Eyed Bill's refusal to concede control scuppering everything.

“I don’t blame the Brighton supporters for the actions they took,” he writes. “They are as fanatical about their club as any group in the country and they deserved better than they were getting from the owners.”

The Lib Dem sacked him, but he didn’t care. “I hadn’t wanted the job in the first place and by then I had had more than enough. It had been 24 hours a day, seven days a week stress and, as anyone will tell you, I don’t handle stress very well.”

Happier memories, perhaps the happiest: his 35-yard free-kick on the cup run semi-final against Sheffield Wednesday at Highbury in ’83. “That was a screamer, that one. I’ve seen it a few times since and it gets better each time I see it,” says Case. And less happy times, for us lot at least, under the present tenure of a manager presiding over even less success than Case despite the benefit of a grand stadium and supportive board.

“I’m up at Liverpool quite a lot but I saw the Southampton friendly at the beginning of the season,” he observes of a current saga he knows little of. “At the moment, just looking at results and paper stuff, it’s taking a bit of time with the players and not going too well. But I’m sure it’ll be alright in the end.”

Hard Case is out now - buy it, it's pretty good.