[Albion] "If Newcastle beat West Ham, they'll be one point behind Arsenal and Chelsea, and two points behind Manchester City"

[Weststander]

Can’t stand 5Live. Grey radio.

I used to love their Monday and Friday evening football progs. Then they ruined one of them with thick as sh1t perennial interrupter Micah Richards becoming a tedious fixture. Rory Smith will be mid flow with an intelligent comment, and then ruined.

 

[Triggaaar]

I think this season more than any other we've gone under hyped. But there's a few good reasons for this. We haven't got a standout player to hype beyond Welbeck, nobody quote knows our style, and the league is very tight. Win the next couple though and I'm sure we'll be all over it again.

Our season has been weird. Quite a few of our games could have gone against us: Manure, Spurs, City, Bournemouth, Newcastle; and on the other hand, Wolves, Forest and Ipswich could have gone in our favour. Arsenal could have gone either way.

We're generally taking our chances, but there's a lot of room for improvement in our overall game. I feel we'll need to improve our overall game a fair bit if we're to finish top 7 (because I don't expect our play in the final third to stay at the current level).

 

[Mellotron]

Ugh - trying not to look at our next run of fixtures and stop myself thinking we can really make hay. The number of times we've been in this moment and come out with a spectacularly low number of points against the lower sides after marquee wins against bigger sides.

Soton H
Fulham A
Leicester A
Palace H
West Ham A
Brentford H

Surely, surely?!

(Sorry, I don't know why I do it to myself....)

 

[Giraffe]

Funnily enough I needed started a thread about being “under the radar”. I agree that the media like us but I still don’t think anyone seriously thinks we are top four material. Whereas our watch us and think we are massively on with a chance. Are the pundits all just “small” club blind?

 

[Berty23]

Funnily enough I needed started a thread about being “under the radar”. I agree that the media like us but I still don’t think anyone seriously thinks we are top four material. Whereas our watch us and think we are massively on with a chance. Are the pundits all just “small” club blind?

I think we are still under the radar. When we beat city it was because they had injuries.

Unable to start that day we had
Dunk
Baleba
Pedro
Kadiolglu
O’Riley
Minteh
Milner
Webster
March

When we beat spurs they ignored the fact we had loads out including
Jpvh
Pedro
Adingra
O’Riley
Milner
March

Etc etc.

 

[Bozza]

Funnily enough I needed started a thread about being “under the radar”.

No point - everyone would ignore it.

 

[Professor Plum]

The problem is the undercurrent of Big Six Bias in all major media orgs (and beyond).

You can call it bias but it’s simply a commercial decision, surely? There’s a very good reason why most of the media give disproportionate attention to the big 6 + Newcastle and possibly Villa. They have far more fans, especially armchair fans, than Brighton. And far more enemies. The ManU fans want to read the positive stuff (new manager, potential new signings) while even more people, their enemies, me included, flock to the bad stuff (manager under pressure, star signings not performing, fans up in arms). An article about Man Utd, good or bad, will get many times more clicks than an item about plucky little Brighton playing nice football.

There is no obligation on the mainstream media to give equal attention to all 20 PL sides. They are commercial operations, fighting each other for clicks and finite advertising revenue.

Our desire to see articles about Albion isn’t because we learn anything new there. NSC will always be the place to come for hard news about the club and players. At heart, most football fans are babies. We want our egos stroked. We want the pleasure of getting attention, and being publicly praised for playing nicely and being the good boys in a wicked world.

If we build it, they will come. And all that.

 

[West Upper Seagull]

Our season has been weird. Quite a few of our games could have gone against us: Manure, Spurs, City, Bournemouth, Newcastle; and on the other hand, Wolves, Forest and Ipswich could have gone in our favour. Arsenal could have gone either way.

We're generally taking our chances, but there's a lot of room for improvement in our overall game. I feel we'll need to improve our overall game a fair bit if we're to finish top 7 (because I don't expect our play in the final third to stay at the current level).

Our room for improvement starts Friday and actually beating teams down the bottom end of the table. I’m fearing that game already as these are the fixtures that will make or break our season in terms of challenging for a European spot

 

[Munkfish]

Ugh - trying not to look at our next run of fixtures and stop myself thinking we can really make hay. The number of times we've been in this moment and come out with a spectacularly low number of points against the lower sides after marquee wins against bigger sides.

Soton H
Fulham A
Leicester A
Palace H
West Ham A
Brentford H

Surely, surely?!

(Sorry, I don't know why I do it to myself....)

It always makes me laugh when I see the how many points will we get out of these fixtures and without fail the we end up performing terribly.

I can guarantee we won’t get 3 against saints as a few of my group plan to meet and have a few Christmas beers post match. Again without fail the Albion lose and ruin a good day out.

 

[Han Solo]

You can call it bias but it’s simply a commercial decision, surely? There’s a very good reason why most of the media give disproportionate attention to the big 6 + Newcastle and possibly Villa. They have far more fans, especially armchair fans, than Brighton. And far more enemies. The ManU fans want to read the positive stuff (new manager, potential new signings) while even more people, their enemies, me included, flock to the bad stuff (manager under pressure, star signings not performing, fans up in arms). An article about Man Utd, good or bad, will get many times more clicks than an item about plucky little Brighton playing nice football.

There is no obligation on the mainstream media to give equal attention to all 20 PL sides. They are commercial operations, fighting each other for clicks and finite advertising revenue.

Our desire to see articles about Albion isn’t because we learn anything new there. NSC will always be the place to come for hard news about the club and players. At heart, most football fans are babies. We want our egos stroked. We want the pleasure of getting attention, and being publicly praised for playing nicely and being the good boys in a wicked world.

If we build it, they will come. And all that.

Indeed.

Writing about us rather than eg City is like sending live reports from smoothly sailing yawl at the same time as Kanye West is screaming on top of a a burning oil tanker. The former is certainly more pleasant, but people want to see Kanye West dying in a fire, not Danny Welbeck fishing up another cod.

 

[Professor Plum]

Indeed.

Writing about us rather than eg City is like sending live reports from smoothly sailing yawl at the same time as Kanye West is screaming on top of a a burning oil tanker. The former is certainly more pleasant, but people want to see Kanye West dying in a fire, not Danny Welbeck fishing up another cod.

Your metaphor deserves a Like.

 

[Justice]

We get patted on the head and that’s about as far as it goes . Pedro is already being sold to a top six side the fact he plays currently for a top six side as it stands is comical.

 

[BadFish]

f*** em, part of the fun of busting this top 6 cartel is exposing the hypocrisy at the top of the game.

We have done thinga differently and the media are as baffled as those big club fans failing to accept that we are currently successful despite not being a big club or would be sleeping giant.

It is glorious that we sit amongst or above them and they cannot process it .

 

[Professor Plum]

f*** em, part of the fun of busting this top 6 cartel is exposing the hypocrisy at the top of the game.

We have done thinga differently and the media are as baffled as those big club fans failing to accept that we are currently successful despite not being a big club or would be sleeping giant.

It is glorious that we sit amongst or above them and they cannot process it .

I just don’t sense the hypocrisy mentioned, or the confusion about, or hostility towards Brighton among the big 6 and the media, that some here seem so stricken by.

Apart from that Talk Sport Chelsea twat, and other Chelsea fans on their podcasts, I find people in the media and in most other fan bases incredibly respectful and kind about Albion, to the extent that I get a bit embarrassed about it. Just yesterday, in a bar in Hong Kong, I had two Man Utd fans telling me how much they envied Brighton fans and wished their club had half our groundedness and quality of back room staff. I get that everywhere from fans of other clubs.

No one in the media is ‘failing to accept we’re currently successful’ but as with Forest in 3rd place a couple of weeks back, they know that 95% of the time these things don’t last and rarely result in a trophy. The one shining exception is Leicester in 2016 which made headlines around the world, it’s that rare an event. Recently here, even the much discussed disruptive impact of Newcastle hasn’t materialised beyond their one top 4 finish. Villa look like they may be going the same way.

I don’t know why we care about this so much. Let the team just continue to entertain us and other football fans, playing well and, we hope, racking up the points. Even if success is maintained for a while it so easily and quickly vanishes. Leicester won the league and the FA Cup later on — success we can only fantasise about — but look at them now. They’re considered a bit of a PL joke and relegation fodder. We’ve already forgotten they had several recent seasons when they were considered a very accomplished team. You have to have success over several decades to threaten ‘busting the top 6 cartel’

 

[Hugo Rune]

Funnily enough I needed started a thread about being “under the radar”. I agree that the media like us but I still don’t think anyone seriously thinks we are top four material. Whereas our watch us and think we are massively on with a chance. Are the pundits all just “small” club blind?

I think Shearer gets it.

After out win against Bournemouth this week, his comments about our front 4 of Mitoma, Pedro, Welbz and Georginio was telling. He spoke about us being able to finish very high up the table because of our attacking prowess and depth of squad in forward positions.

He mentioned Ferguson and Minteh coming in if we get injuries etc but he probably realises that Adingra, Enciso, March and Gruda can all do a good job too.

If we keep winning, he’ll continue this narrative but will add a retrospective qualifier such as ‘I’ve been speaking about Brighton being a threat to the top four for months, I told you Gary…..’.

 

[Garry Nelson's Left Foot]

Ugh - trying not to look at our next run of fixtures and stop myself thinking we can really make hay. The number of times we've been in this moment and come out with a spectacularly low number of points against the lower sides after marquee wins against bigger sides.

Soton H
Fulham A
Leicester A
Palace H
West Ham A
Brentford H

Surely, surely?!

(Sorry, I don't know why I do it to myself....)

It's the Southampton game that's the killer for me. Win it and we're second for 24ish hours. So that's as close to a guaranteed loss as is possible. We might sneak a draw but that's a long shot because it'd put us third.

 

[Hugo Rune]

It's the Southampton game that's the killer for me. Win it and we're second for 24ish hours. So that's as close to a guaranteed loss as is possible. We might sneak a draw but that's a long shot because it'd put us third.

Interestingly, if we do lose on Friday, you can be sure that Chelsea and Arsenal will then drop points against the claret and blues so we’ll know that if we’d won, we would have stayed 2nd all week. Just to rub our noses in it!

 

[Iggle Piggle]

Talksport gets a rough ride on here - and rightly so when talking about that Bellend Goldstein - but whenever Alex Crook is on, he has mentioned numerous times that "Brighton are challenging for the top 4" Danny Murphy reckons our best 11 is top 4. Even Simon Jordan grumbles a sentence to say we are a well run club every now and again.

Everyone ignores them of course but those that are watching are learning.

Anyway phone in now if you think Man Utd will win the Premier league.

 

[Bakero]

Talksport gets a rough ride on here - and rightly so when talking about that Bellend Goldstein - but whenever Alex Crook is on, he has mentioned numerous times that "Brighton are challenging for the top 4" Danny Murphy reckons our best 11 is top 4. Even Simon Jordan grumbles a sentence to say we are a well run club every now and again.

Everyone ignores them of course but those that are watching are learning.

Anyway phone in now if you think Man Utd will win the league.

What does Murphy reckon is our best 11? I'm not sure I know

 

[Brovion]

If Pedro remains injury free, he will soon be being billed as our stand out performer by the media.

And of course the big question is: where's he going next? Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are reported to be interested in him. Verbruggen has also been a stand-out performer, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are reported to be interested in him. Baleba too has been a revelation this season, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are reported to be interested in him. O'Riley turned a few heads with his winner against Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are reported to be interested in him. Ferguson's star as waned a little, but Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are reported to be interested in him. An injury-free Hinshlewood could be on the verge of an England call-up, and Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are reported to be interested in him. And so on.