[Albion] Classic Match - Brighton 5 - Norwich 0

[Brian Munich]

There were plenty of games that season that hinted 'this is the year'.
Beating Leeds in December followed by Blackburn & Birmingham away plus QPR home.
Home defeat to Newcastle in Feb may have put a dampner on it followed by defeat to Huddersfield, our two closest rivals.
Next up draw at Brentford and whilst still 2nd, only 3 points clear.
A home draw with Ipswich narrowed it to 1 point!
Victories over Barnsley & Reading put the gap to 3 with Huddersfield hanging on after 34 games.
Week 36 we lost to Forest but luckily Huddersfield lost to Newcastle, that could have put us 3rd had Huds beaten the Geordies at home (although GD was in our favour).
The games kept coming and the gap remained at 3.
Untill the 1st April. Little Burton beat Huddersfield and the gap was 6 points with 7 to play and still a far superior GD. That may have been the week it was in our own hands.
Game day 41 was the QPR away and both Newcastle and Huddersfield lost making the gap 9 with 5 to play. We were also top of the league.
Game 42 was the Wolves away victory and 'we're on our way' could start. Top, 9 clear, best GD, 4 to play.
Game 43......... Wigan.
Norwich were a very good team, sat 4th in the league one point below Brighton when they came to us. Game 15, 29th October. Yes, that was the game that gave us belief that we could do it.

You’ve got your games mixed up. The home defeat to Newcastle came after those wins against Barnsley and Reading at the end of Feb. The Newcastle defeat was followed by losing 0-3 at Forest and genuine squeaky bums as Shane Duffy broke his foot only 2-3 weeks after Connor Goldson had been ruled out for the season, as well as Lewis Dunk collecting yellow cards to make a potential 3 match ban a realistic problem. Thankfully, Uwe was back just in time following that Forrest game and the fixture computer had been kind enough to give us a confidence boosting game against Rotherham, who were really crap at that point. Also, we were lucky enough to have Tomori on loan who did a brilliant job in the games were Lewis Dunk had to go off suffering from the shits (Birmingham City at home and QPR away).
I also don't think that we were ever as close as only 1 point clear of 3rd in the second half of the season. Huddersfield and Leeds were certainly chasing us but were always behind by at least 4-5 points, just with games in hand.