Yes, he wasn't being serious. And if someone does say that and mean it, then they need mocking as much as we mock opposing fans who say it.Errr.
Yes, he wasn't being serious. And if someone does say that and mean it, then they need mocking as much as we mock opposing fans who say it.Errr.
Uhmm. Lewis Dunk playing for England recently. Of course it was only a friendly, and they just gave him a game to rest a few players from the top 6This. The last thing I want right now is recognition of our existence. When the telly football or news programmes discuss the league table they talk about the race for the title 'Liverpool, Citeh, (mumble mumble) Spuds' and the relegaction battle 'Terriers, Bumley (mumble mumble) Carduff'. We are not even mentioned. We are hidden in plain sight, with no players of any note. Long may it stay that way.
'If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all'I'm probably in the minority, but I don't get the fuss about the 'teams like Brighton' comment. On it's own it's clearly innocent, it's just a grouping of similar teams, in most instances of it's current use it means teams that have barely any premier league experience (comparatively speaking), have a small wage bill (comparatively speaking), will be looking over their shoulder with a main aim of surviving. An entirely reasonable categorising of us as a team.
When put in the context of established premier league teams, there is admittedly a degree of arrogance to it, but the 'should be beating...' aspect is still entirely reasonable. Take Everton as the recent example. When we played them at their place we were outplayed and well beaten. Most neutrals, and some of the more pragmatic members of our fanbase took the loss as expected. They are Everton, they are generally one of the better mid-table teams in the division, one of the few clubs to have broken into the top four that isn't one of the big six. Their tenure in the premier league has made sure they are a tough side and their wage bill is twice that of ours (or their average wage is). We can't expect to be beating Everton. Given that, shouldn't they be beating teams like us?
Taking it away from Everton... At the start of the season, we look at the fixtures and we identify the games we need to win to survive. A lot of the games that we will view as winnable will be the games against 'teams like Brighton' - namely Huddersfield, Wolves, Cardiff, Fulham etc. Teams expected to be in the bottom third. If we want to stay up this year, we're not going to get a lot of points v the big six, so we're realistically looking to get our points from the bottom eight. We need to be beating... teams like Brighton.
Exactly. Some Gooner gave it the old #TeamsLikeBrighton on Twatter the other day, but admitted Brighton had played 'brilliantly'. I askef how that made sense, but gave up after a bit of a confusing reply [emoji2357]The problem I have with "we should be beating teams like Brighton" is that it arrogantly makes no reference to how well "teams like Brighton" actually played in order to get that result.
Several times we've played well enough at fortress Amex to say we deserved some sort of result, regardless of the opposition. Man Utd were dire but we absolutely thrashed them 3-2. I reckon we'd have beaten anyone outside the top 4 on that day. Same goes for last season's Arsenal home win.
So when someone says "we should be beating teams like Brighton", they actually mean "we should be above teams like Brighton in the table". And actually, they usually are, so it doesn't need saying. But don't think you should be able to turn up at the Amex and just win, because on our day this team can actually play some very good stuff. In fact, our day is quite often which is why we're nowhere near the bottom of the league.
The Albion of course should be beating #TeamsLikeCardiff, which is why NSC went into meltdown when we lost there a few weeks ago.
It went into meltdown because we lost to an offside goal and we all saw how awful they were before Stephens decided to get himself sent off and CH decided that the consequence of this was that we wouldn't attack for the rest of the game. They truly are a bad side (not that we have any right to beat them), but we lost that game due to our own stupidity rather than anything particularly brilliant that they did.
They are presently 17th, which is only one position below our finish last season. As for CH's tactics, they would have worked had the linesman correctly identified the offside goal and I suspect most would have accepted a point under the circumstances of playing with ten men for an hour. As it was the 'Hughton Out' brigade were busy stroking themselves with excitement.
When it comes from any of the big six then fair enough, they have a quality of player and a financial clout which far exceeds anyone else. However anyone from 7th down can beat anyone else, and so for the likes of West Ham or Everton to say it is simply arrogance. Especially West Ham, who were a Championship team themselves not so very long ago and regular relegation candidates in recent times.