Having now moved away from Hertfordshire, but roots of course still buried there, I find myself now living in the catchment of Kent Surrey border along the the A23 rivalry between Palace and Brighton but neither still shine in this areas as its Chelsea that seem to have the largest support, cause too many glory hunters... And I would have to say that the biggest Bell ends support the Palace (and of course Chelsea) and the slightly more intelligent support the Albion. When I have ever got into the conversations of football around this season with either the Palace or Albion fans, there is a common ground that each reckon they will easily survive and Watford are on target to go straight back down.. Watford being a yo yo club, unlike themselves Whilst they have made a great start against Burnley, which is one of the other teams that I think will be fighting it out for survival this year, I just don't think they have the pace at the back to deal with fast counter attacking football. In this regards I think they may struggle and credit to them if they can get 15th or higher again this season, but probably like us, Brighton will be fighting for that 17th place. If we can get a point there it would be great result but actually with the pace of Dennis and Sarr I'd would be expecting to exploit them and take three on Saturday and another step towards survival. 0-2 (Sarr, Dennis)
Brighton stay up quite easily imo, I get they don't have the most clinical strikers, but surely they don't have the same issues converting chances as they did last season?
I’m not having the criticism of Brighton as a city, it’s an infinitely better place than Watford and I would happily move there. As for the game my main hope is we continue with the optimistic showing from last week. In theory the pace in our forward line should be a good weapon in away games. At the very least our away form should be better than two seasons ago. Would be delighted with a point in most circumstances. Prediction Brighton 0-6 Watford Sarr (23, 42, 78), Dennis (27), Cucho (85, 89), Deeney (sent off 89)
Burnley should have stuffed Brighton and I'm still not sure how they didn't. Both goals were identical - low balls from the right onto the penalty spot. Masina/Rose take note.
Our daughter, Lilly Longtongue, went to University there (but Brighton uni right by their ground rather than Sussex). Did I mention she's a paramedic now? Of course I know it well from many trips from Watford during the youth days. I particularly remember going in a Ford Anglia full of skint kids (nothing changes) and we had to get all the way there and back by stopping and siphoning off petrol from parked cars every so often. Always very strong and tough police in Brighton and we always always got pulled over on the outskirts on the way there. Was it Brighton where there used to be a shooting game on the pier where hitting the bullseye was rewarded by a piece of clothing being automatically removed from the life-size wooden woman model? Spent £££ on that and I don't think I ever did get her down further than her underwear.
Oh and if anyone wants an amazing restaurant in Brighton, then I recommend this argentine steakhouse Baqueano we went to down there. Tremendous beefsteak! You could have cut the steak with a slice of bread. And run by Argentinians too, so nice and authentic. https://www.baqueano.co.uk/
I had a quick look at their forum (I wish they split theirs up into topics like we do), some comments fair but when you see these comments you wonder whether the author made a snap opinion based on the scoreline: Yes, it was a fortunate deflection, but it doesn't take away the fact that we deserved to be 2-0 up at half time. Having been at the match, like a lot of us, I don't remember them cutting through our defence at all, let alone easily. Their first was just a very good unsaveable shot from outside of the box, the second was a daft penalty on 90+6 minutes. As for Villa's defence, Mings didn't gift us anything (you can't count the deflection), Mings was doing the job of two defenders because Taggart was taken to pieces.
In Brighton at the moment - wish you had posted this last week when I was booking restaurants! Will note for next time though.
Went into a clothes shop in Brighton where they bought clothes from charity shops and then resold them as 'vintage' for 5 times the price They left a lot of the original tags on by mistake
Yeah this is delusional, what the ****. Usually hope fans of similarly 'smaller' clubs are more likely to be bastions of some reason, compared to 15 year old City Football Group fans on Twitter, say - in this case apparently not.
I wouldn't say we've been a clinical side since, well, Ighalo's first season in the Prem, so that's possibly still a concern, but we thoroughly deserved the win. Kucka possibly would have cut the ball out for their first goal, and by the time Masina made that stupid tackle the game was basically won, so I've still got concerns about the bench and about certain positions, but our attack can worry anyone, so I don't go into this game with any fear! Agreed that their centre backs didn't play particularly badly, it was their midfield and Targett in the first half who were run ragged
I'd keep the same side apart from Deeney instead of Sarr and Ray Train instead of Cleverley. Id go 442 with Ray Train on the right wing and Troy leading the line with Dennis trying to keep up with his pace. We need our main man to lead us to victory. Our goals against Villa relied on pace and skill not real football. I'd switch to a slow possession based game giving Brighton plenty of time to get men behind the ball as we slowly work our way up the pitch and then rely in Deeney's goalscoring instincts to sweep us to victory. COYH!!
Very interested to see this one. In our last season in the PL and then for at least half of our promotion campaign, our away form was our Achilles heel. We only won twice on the road when we went down, and it did for Ivic too. Xisco sorted it out eventually, but even then we lost two of our last three away matches last season. So the big question is how will we be this year on the road? How will we approach them? Will we set up any differently? Will home crowds make any difference? I’d probably take a point if offered, keep the unbeaten start going and build on the Villa win BUT there’s a nagging feeling that this is one of our most likely winnable away fixtures of the season and it would be great to be bold and brave and go out all for a 100% start to the campaign. Very intrigued to watch this one play out.
Who are these Laridae you speak of? Argentatus argentatus, fuscus graellsii or even ridibundus? Will they steal our fish & chips?
Sorry to hear about your daughter, thankfully these days people are kinder to other people with disabilities. What happened to her if you dont mind me asking?
Surely we can aspire to better than that. How about top half? Leeds finished tenth last season, first time back after being away for yonks. There are ten or so other clubs (apart from them) we COULD finish above. How about ALL of them then? I doubt that will happen this time around but it's a reasonable ambition. If we continue to aspire to only save ourselves by the skin-of-our-teeth, particularly without a cup run as some sort of light relief, then that sounds unremittingly turgid to me. However, if we do finish 17th this time around, and just save ourselves, then I guess I'd be happy enough to get to do it all again the next season. But our ambition should be beyond that.
Interesting to note that only 19.4% of respondents to this poll thus far actually think we're going to lose this game. What a difference from last time out! And we're away this time too. Could this have anything to do with there actually being a bit of real evidence on the board now (a victory in our first PL fixture of the season) as opposed to the invented doom-and-gloom around 'so called evidence' from the close season? What a fickle lot we are. But moving in the right direction ...
Yes. Must be awful for you. Tripping over them when you've just stepped out of the opera during a shower too.
Great o.p. from Smudger as per thank you (despite my single criticism). And thanks for all the hostelry etc. recommendations. I'm staying overnight Saturday so will sample a few over the weekend. I'd also recommend the Fortune of War on the seafront a couple of hundred yards west of the Palace Pier. If the weather's nice. Great funky tunes.
