[Albion] Fab OUT

[Han Solo]

Why do people only talk about the last 6 months of RDZ when we had massive injuries, fatigue from playing in Europe and a stroppy manager, and ignore the amazing season and a half before that? The excitement of Europe for the first time?

I’m on the same page as Jetset Jimbo. The football under Fab is dull, it really isn’t that much fun to watch.

I’ll qualify that by saying that obviously Fab is a young manager and we have young players and so all of this may change with familiarity and experience but my fear is just that it’s his style of football.

Also results have been ok in the main, good and bad and we have a decent points total and place in the league. Sometimes it’s not just about the point on the board though, we all want to watch exciting football in the end.

Thanks for calling me "people", I'll put it on my CV.

The last six months looked a lot like the previous six months, with the difference that people were happy because we were winning against an Ajax close to the relegation zone in Eredivisie, a French team that finished mid-table in Ligue 1 and AEK Athens that has a third or so of our wage budget. These wins along with a handful of other great victories (Spurs and Palace most frequently mentioned) disguised a frequently unwatchable brand of football that resulted in 33 points from our final 32 PL games.

The fatigue thing is a load of tosh. We had a massive squad compared to most teams and rotated frequently. In no other season in frequent memory has fewer players made 3k+ minutes on the pitch. Certainly not in our best ones.

24/25:
Players over 4k minutes: 1
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 2
Players between 2k-8k minutes: 8

23/24

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 5
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 5

2022/23

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 6
Players between 2k-3k mintes: 5

2021/22
Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 3
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 7

As for injuries, yes we had them and they had an impact. But we went into last season after what most people saw as a fantastic transfer window - in the thread "Rate the window out of 10", one North Stand Chat-user called @Guinness Boy even gave it a 10 out of 10:

10. Caicedo and Mac always going. Maxed the value of both, both replaced positionally. Added a lot of youth but some nice experience with Milner.

Still saying that I think tomorrow will be very difficult but once Fati and Baleba are bedded in we have at least the equivalent of last season positionally and have swapped individual brilliance for more cover in depth.

With a chunky nice squad of 26 established footballers - five more than Man City and 3-4 more than most other teams (apart from two or three teams collecting players for fun), we were ready for injuries.

Of course, getting players injured will have some sort of impact. But when we have 26 players and 8-10 players are injured, we still have 16 handsomely paid lads and its the job of the handsomely paid head coach.

Blaming injuries is like blaming referees: its for weaklings. If you go and lose 7-0 to Nottingham, 4-0 against Luton, 6-1 against Villa or 3-0 against Burnley, spare me the bullshit about the eight lads missing - lets focus on what the other 16 professional Premier League players did wrong and how to not make it happen again.

Moaning about injuries is defeatist self-victimisation most frequently expressed by Arsenal or Manchester United fans picking their teams as compensation for a lack of self-confidence. "We're useless and these external uncontrollable things must be the reason!"... bah. Humbug.

People really need to man or possibly woman up when it comes to these things. The reason why you don't win games is never "the ref made a bad call" or "this guy was injured", it is always "we could have done better". Anyone blaming the ref, the weather, The Terrace or injuries isn't being honest to himself. That goes for Potter, De Zerbi, Hurzeler, fans, media.

 

[chaileyjem]

Also results have been ok in the main, good and bad and we have a decent points total and place in the league. Sometimes it’s not just about the point on the board though, we all want to watch exciting football in the end.

We're still tracking our best (probably our 2nd best) ever finish in top flight football. IN our entire history.
We've beaten Man City, Chelsea (twice), United (twice), and Spurs. Arsenal couldn't beat us.
At the Amex - we've had 2 x last minute winners, came back from 2-0 down to beat Spurs, thrashed Chelsea, came from 1-0 down to beat City and Mitoma scored a goal i'll remember til i die. Away from home - we thrashed United, Saints, Everton, Norwich and had famous victories v Newcastle (twice). Perhaps a bit harsh to call it "ok in the main" - certainly compared to other seasons. ? But fair enough.
(and yes failing to beat Saints and Ipswich at home, the Wolves collapse, the last week especially and yes, the 7-1 saw some exciting football. but just not from us. )

 

[Greg Bobkin]

Has he FACKED off yet, or what?

 

[Littlemo]

Thanks for calling me "people", I'll put it on my CV.

The last six months looked a lot like the previous six months, with the difference that people were happy because we were winning against an Ajax close to the relegation zone in Eredivisie, a French team that finished mid-table in Ligue 1 and AEK Athens that has a third or so of our wage budget. These wins along with a handful of other great victories (Spurs and Palace most frequently mentioned) disguised a frequently unwatchable brand of football that resulted in 33 points from our final 32 PL games.

The fatigue thing is a load of tosh. We had a massive squad compared to most teams and rotated frequently. In no other season in frequent memory has fewer players made 3k+ minutes on the pitch. Certainly not in our best ones.

24/25:
Players over 4k minutes: 1
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 2
Players between 2k-8k minutes: 8

23/24

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 5
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 5

2022/23

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 6
Players between 2k-3k mintes: 5

2021/22
Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 3
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 7

As for injuries, yes we had them and they had an impact. But we went into last season after what most people saw as a fantastic transfer window - in the thread "Rate the window out of 10", one North Stand Chat-user called @Guinness Boy even gave it a 10 out of 10:



With a chunky nice squad of 26 established footballers - five more than Man City and 3-4 more than most other teams (apart from two or three teams collecting players for fun), we were ready for injuries.

Of course, getting players injured will have some sort of impact. But when we have 26 players and 8-10 players are injured, we still have 16 handsomely paid lads and its the job of the handsomely paid head coach.

Blaming injuries is like blaming referees: its for weaklings. If you go and lose 7-0 to Nottingham, 4-0 against Luton, 6-1 against Villa or 3-0 against Burnley, spare me the bullshit about the eight lads missing - lets focus on what the other 16 professional Premier League players did wrong and how to not make it happen again.

Moaning about injuries is defeatist self-victimisation most frequently expressed by Arsenal or Manchester United fans picking their teams as compensation for a lack of self-confidence. "We're useless and these external uncontrollable things must be the reason!"... bah. Humbug.

People really need to man or possibly woman up when it comes to these things. The reason why you don't win games is never "the ref made a bad call" or "this guy was injured", it is always "we could have done better". Anyone blaming the ref, the weather, The Terrace or injuries isn't being honest to himself. That goes for Potter, De Zerbi, Hurzeler, fans, media.

Sorry I wasn’t calling you “people” it’s just something I have very frequently seen on here that when talking about RDZ, everyone goes on about the last 6 months and ignores the season and half of good football we actually did have. Including getting into Europe for the first time ever.

I don’t remotely agree with some of what you have written. The football in the first half of that season wasn’t always great but it wasn’t at all unwatchable. You also can’t say it’s terrible apart from all those games that weren’t, as you are trying to do here.

The second half was poor but, what you write simply isn’t true - fatigue played a massive part and there wasn’t much rotation done at all. We still suffered from having too many inexperienced kids and not enough fit senior players. I am not bothered about how we rate the transfer window on here, it’s not really actually indicative of anything except a happy fanbase. We brought in Dahoud and Fati, which got everyone excited but they were just 2 players, and more kids who were prospects.

In some ways I agree about blaming injuries, they occur and need to be a part of a managers job to get on with it anyway but they do have an impact. We are blaming them this season for Fab’s poorer games, either it matters or not.

 

[Machiavelli]

And to be fair to FH and contradict myself (but only a little bit), it took time for Potter's desired style of play to really bed in, and once it did, we looked really good. Then RDZ inherited a team that was used to playing a style that was close to what he wanted.

So you could argue that RDZ had it relatively easy compared with GP and FH, in that he had less work to do to implement his preferred style.

Maybe next season we'll be playing full-throated Huerzelerball, crushing all before us, and this whole conversation will look rather silly. I hope so. Right now I'm just not seeing it but I really, really want to be proven wrong.

Thanks for taking this thread in an interesting direction and I note in this post you're nuancing your position, something I'll attempt to emulate in this post.
I like the football we play under FH more than you do. Not sure anything will eclipse how we played for a while under RDZ when everything clicked. For me, the 3-0 Liverpool game was the zenith and we kept that going for most of the rest of the season. RDZ had a bad start and didn't fully implement his style until after the WC which was like a pre-season to convey his ideas about football.
During 23/24, we weren't quite as good and deteriorated during 24 under RDZ. Much of this was because the oppo had worked out how to play the RDZ system. And this is a problem that any 'system' -- or ideological -- manager faces. Sometimes it takes ages for that to happen, so for Pep it's taken about 15 years, but now it's happened, it's happened starkly. Our downturn in results and performances was as much to do with this as injuries IMO.
FH isn't a system/ideology manager but does have a 'philosophy', which is to combine that passing game and to ramp it up through intensity. Inevitably you'll compromise some of the intricacy of the passing/movement/Pep/RDZ game in doing this. What you'll also not get is a clearly discernible 'system' or ideology -- and I think this is behind many 'not enjoying' the football under FH.
I understand that Bloom appointed FH in part as a response to the drama under RDZ and the demand to break our recruitment model (with 24-29yo 'in peak' signings), but also because FH fits our model of recruiting potential and using B&HA as a platform to develop that potential. That means inevitably there will be some mistakes, and we've seen that this year. Posters banging on about the 'suicidal' high-line against Chelsea neglect that we'd played a high line successfully in previous games. FH responded by saying that we played 'a dynamic line'.
But I really like us when we're playing well (and not trying to break down a deep block, which we've struggled with under GP and RDZ too). I like the back and forth, intensity, running power of our game. The games we played against Bournemouth and Newcastle (both of whom play similarly to us) were thrilling and absorbing and, as pure sporting contests, these were better than the clicking under RDZ versus Liverpool.

We won't find a clear 'system' under FH (who will be here for a while I suspect) but we will be able to identify his 'philosophy', which is to run further than the oppo and to play with intensity. In terms of the intensity thing, three points. First, you can't do it constantly for c98 minutes, you need to find your moments and it's this that needs to be developed. Second, it'll be easier with a close season to work on both sprinting and stamina. Third, one of its key elements is using 16 players during a game, cranking things up after 60/70 minutes -- and this is why we've got a bigger more 'top-heavy' squad, although this aim has been compromised by the injuries this season.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Thanks for calling me "people", I'll put it on my CV.

The last six months looked a lot like the previous six months, with the difference that people were happy because we were winning against an Ajax close to the relegation zone in Eredivisie, a French team that finished mid-table in Ligue 1 and AEK Athens that has a third or so of our wage budget. These wins along with a handful of other great victories (Spurs and Palace most frequently mentioned) disguised a frequently unwatchable brand of football that resulted in 33 points from our final 32 PL games.

The fatigue thing is a load of tosh. We had a massive squad compared to most teams and rotated frequently. In no other season in frequent memory has fewer players made 3k+ minutes on the pitch. Certainly not in our best ones.

24/25:
Players over 4k minutes: 1
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 2
Players between 2k-8k minutes: 8

23/24

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 5
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 5

2022/23

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 6
Players between 2k-3k mintes: 5

2021/22
Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 3
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 7

As for injuries, yes we had them and they had an impact. But we went into last season after what most people saw as a fantastic transfer window - in the thread "Rate the window out of 10", one North Stand Chat-user called @Guinness Boy even gave it a 10 out of 10:



With a chunky nice squad of 26 established footballers - five more than Man City and 3-4 more than most other teams (apart from two or three teams collecting players for fun), we were ready for injuries.

Of course, getting players injured will have some sort of impact. But when we have 26 players and 8-10 players are injured, we still have 16 handsomely paid lads and its the job of the handsomely paid head coach.

Blaming injuries is like blaming referees: its for weaklings. If you go and lose 7-0 to Nottingham, 4-0 against Luton, 6-1 against Villa or 3-0 against Burnley, spare me the bullshit about the eight lads missing - lets focus on what the other 16 professional Premier League players did wrong and how to not make it happen again.

Moaning about injuries is defeatist self-victimisation most frequently expressed by Arsenal or Manchester United fans picking their teams as compensation for a lack of self-confidence. "We're useless and these external uncontrollable things must be the reason!"... bah. Humbug.

People really need to man or possibly woman up when it comes to these things. The reason why you don't win games is never "the ref made a bad call" or "this guy was injured", it is always "we could have done better". Anyone blaming the ref, the weather, The Terrace or injuries isn't being honest to himself. That goes for Potter, De Zerbi, Hurzeler, fans, media.

I'm not sure why you've singled me out. I guess you must be trolling because 37 people gave it a 10 and more than 71% of respondents gave it an 8 or over. So here's the attention you ordered......

I don't think 71% of people were wrong about THAT window. We'd just finished tracking Ansu f***ing Fati from Barcelona and were about to start a Europa League campaign in which we topped our group, winning away in Athens, at home to Marseille and doing the double over Ajax. We also won our first two games of that EPL campaign 4-1. That poll was taken in September. People were on a natural high.

Where we went wrong was the January window. It was obvious by then we had no one who could replace Mitoma and Adingra since March had done his ACL and Barca had sent us a broken Fati. We, frankly, didn't even try. My rating for that window would be about a 1.

But I still have no idea why you've singled out me or what it has to do with people calling for Hurzeler's head?

 

[Doug-ees-evil]

Thanks for taking this thread in an interesting direction and I note in this post you're nuancing your position, something I'll attempt to emulate in this post.
I like the football we play under FH more than you do. Not sure anything will eclipse how we played for a while under RDZ when everything clicked. For me, the 3-0 Liverpool game was the zenith and we kept that going for most of the rest of the season. RDZ had a bad start and didn't fully implement his style until after the WC which was like a pre-season to convey his ideas about football.
During 23/24, we weren't quite as good and deteriorated during 24 under RDZ. Much of this was because the oppo had worked out how to play the RDZ system. And this is a problem that any 'system' -- or ideological -- manager faces. Sometimes it takes ages for that to happen, so for Pep it's taken about 15 years, but now it's happened, it's happened starkly. Our downturn in results and performances was as much to do with this as injuries IMO.
FH isn't a system/ideology manager but does have a 'philosophy', which is to combine that passing game and to ramp it up through intensity. Inevitably you'll compromise some of the intricacy of the passing/movement/Pep/RDZ game in doing this. What you'll also not get is a clearly discernible 'system' or ideology -- and I think this is behind many 'not enjoying' the football under FH.
I understand that Bloom appointed FH in part as a response to the drama under RDZ and the demand to break our recruitment model (with 24-29yo 'in peak' signings), but also because FH fits our model of recruiting potential and using B&HA as a platform to develop that potential. That means inevitably there will be some mistakes, and we've seen that this year. Posters banging on about the 'suicidal' high-line against Chelsea neglect that we'd played a high line successfully in previous games. FH responded by saying that we played 'a dynamic line'.
But I really like us when we're playing well (and not trying to break down a deep block, which we've struggled with under GP and RDZ too). I like the back and forth, intensity, running power of our game. The games we played against Bournemouth and Newcastle (both of whom play similarly to us) were thrilling and absorbing and, as pure sporting contests, these were better than the clicking under RDZ versus Liverpool.

We won't find a clear 'system' under FH (who will be here for a while I suspect) but we will be able to identify his 'philosophy', which is to run further than the oppo and to play with intensity. In terms of the intensity thing, three points. First, you can't do it constantly for c98 minutes, you need to find your moments and it's this that needs to be developed. Second, it'll be easier with a close season to work on both sprinting and stamina. Third, one of its key elements is using 16 players during a game, cranking things up after 60/70 minutes -- and this is why we've got a bigger more 'top-heavy' squad, although this aim has been compromised by the injuries this season.

Excellent post.
Agree and a very useful explainer as to why it's a struggle at times to grasp the style/idea or the system. It's because it changes match-to-match, even within games. Next year's learning curve for FH is to overcome low-blocks and the anti-football teams – and also the teams who are just simply more physical/competitive and aggressive. Despite the epic summer splurge, FH probably hasn't got all the right players for all these 'systems' just yet.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Thanks for taking this thread in an interesting direction and I note in this post you're nuancing your position, something I'll attempt to emulate in this post.
I like the football we play under FH more than you do. Not sure anything will eclipse how we played for a while under RDZ when everything clicked. For me, the 3-0 Liverpool game was the zenith and we kept that going for most of the rest of the season. RDZ had a bad start and didn't fully implement his style until after the WC which was like a pre-season to convey his ideas about football.
During 23/24, we weren't quite as good and deteriorated during 24 under RDZ. Much of this was because the oppo had worked out how to play the RDZ system. And this is a problem that any 'system' -- or ideological -- manager faces. Sometimes it takes ages for that to happen, so for Pep it's taken about 15 years, but now it's happened, it's happened starkly. Our downturn in results and performances was as much to do with this as injuries IMO.
FH isn't a system/ideology manager but does have a 'philosophy', which is to combine that passing game and to ramp it up through intensity. Inevitably you'll compromise some of the intricacy of the passing/movement/Pep/RDZ game in doing this. What you'll also not get is a clearly discernible 'system' or ideology -- and I think this is behind many 'not enjoying' the football under FH.
I understand that Bloom appointed FH in part as a response to the drama under RDZ and the demand to break our recruitment model (with 24-29yo 'in peak' signings), but also because FH fits our model of recruiting potential and using B&HA as a platform to develop that potential. That means inevitably there will be some mistakes, and we've seen that this year. Posters banging on about the 'suicidal' high-line against Chelsea neglect that we'd played a high line successfully in previous games. FH responded by saying that we played 'a dynamic line'.
But I really like us when we're playing well (and not trying to break down a deep block, which we've struggled with under GP and RDZ too). I like the back and forth, intensity, running power of our game. The games we played against Bournemouth and Newcastle (both of whom play similarly to us) were thrilling and absorbing and, as pure sporting contests, these were better than the clicking under RDZ versus Liverpool.

We won't find a clear 'system' under FH (who will be here for a while I suspect) but we will be able to identify his 'philosophy', which is to run further than the oppo and to play with intensity. In terms of the intensity thing, three points. First, you can't do it constantly for c98 minutes, you need to find your moments and it's this that needs to be developed. Second, it'll be easier with a close season to work on both sprinting and stamina. Third, one of its key elements is using 16 players during a game, cranking things up after 60/70 minutes -- and this is why we've got a bigger more 'top-heavy' squad, although this aim has been compromised by the injuries this season.

Good post. I think FH is adapting and learning all the time.

However, re my highlighted point. are the injuries being talked about on this thread, to some extent, a by-product of the increase in intensity and running? If so (and I appreciate some are impact / challenge injuries) then some of the outcome of this philosophy is a continuation of our club's poor injury record.

 

[Machiavelli]

Good post. I think FH is adapting and learning all the time.

However, re my highlighted point. are the injuries being talked about on this thread, to some extent, a by-product of the increase in intensity and running? If so (and I appreciate some are impact / challenge injuries) then some of the outcome of this philosophy is a continuation of our club's poor injury record.

I think some of the injuries are due to the transition to the FH philosophy, and the more intensive/physical training regime. But only some. There have been notable in-game injuries that have nothing to do with the more intense style, eg Georginio twisting ankle, MOR horror-tackle, Joao Pedro assault by MGW.
Of current PL managers, FH is most similar to Iraola for me, and it took a while to embed his ideas but Bournemouth have reaped the rewards of it this season. Similarly, it took a season or so (and lots of initial injuries) for Klopp to transform Liverpool to 'heavy-metal football'.

 

[Commander]

I wonder if anybody in their wildest dreams ever envisaged a Manager OUT thread on the same page as a "Is the Champions League now out of reach?" thread on NSC.

That alone should make the Fab OUTers feel like very silly little children.

 

[oldboyroy]

I do have a feeling that if we fail to beat Leicester Saturday or lose, the Amex may become a little toxic! I may be wrong but it'll be strange considering we're in top half of table.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

I do have a feeling that if we fail to beat Leicester Saturday or lose, the Amex may become a little toxic! I may be wrong but it'll be strange considering we're in top half of table.

If toxic = lots of muttering in the park and ride queue at 4:40, then yeh.

I don't see it kicking off

 

[Clive Walker]

I do have a feeling that if we fail to beat Leicester Saturday or lose, the Amex may become a little toxic! I may be wrong but it'll be strange considering we're in top half of table.

with every passing week it seems that Brighton fans become a little bit more precious.

Just look at where we are as a club these days!

 

[oldboyroy]

If toxic = lots of muttering in the park and ride queue at 4:40, then yeh.

I don't see it kicking off

Neither to I but imagine they'll be a few moans/boos if it goes wrong. Silly, I know but football fans can be very fickle.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Thanks for calling me "people", I'll put it on my CV.

The last six months looked a lot like the previous six months, with the difference that people were happy because we were winning against an Ajax close to the relegation zone in Eredivisie, a French team that finished mid-table in Ligue 1 and AEK Athens that has a third or so of our wage budget. These wins along with a handful of other great victories (Spurs and Palace most frequently mentioned) disguised a frequently unwatchable brand of football that resulted in 33 points from our final 32 PL games.

The fatigue thing is a load of tosh. We had a massive squad compared to most teams and rotated frequently. In no other season in frequent memory has fewer players made 3k+ minutes on the pitch. Certainly not in our best ones.

24/25:
Players over 4k minutes: 1
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 2
Players between 2k-8k minutes: 8

23/24

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 5
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 5

2022/23

Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 6
Players between 2k-3k mintes: 5

2021/22
Players over 4k minutes: 0
Players between 3k-4k minutes: 3
Players between 2k-3k minutes: 7

As for injuries, yes we had them and they had an impact. But we went into last season after what most people saw as a fantastic transfer window - in the thread "Rate the window out of 10", one North Stand Chat-user called @Guinness Boy even gave it a 10 out of 10:



With a chunky nice squad of 26 established footballers - five more than Man City and 3-4 more than most other teams (apart from two or three teams collecting players for fun), we were ready for injuries.

Of course, getting players injured will have some sort of impact. But when we have 26 players and 8-10 players are injured, we still have 16 handsomely paid lads and its the job of the handsomely paid head coach.

Blaming injuries is like blaming referees: its for weaklings. If you go and lose 7-0 to Nottingham, 4-0 against Luton, 6-1 against Villa or 3-0 against Burnley, spare me the bullshit about the eight lads missing - lets focus on what the other 16 professional Premier League players did wrong and how to not make it happen again.

Moaning about injuries is defeatist self-victimisation most frequently expressed by Arsenal or Manchester United fans picking their teams as compensation for a lack of self-confidence. "We're useless and these external uncontrollable things must be the reason!"... bah. Humbug.

People really need to man or possibly woman up when it comes to these things. The reason why you don't win games is never "the ref made a bad call" or "this guy was injured", it is always "we could have done better". Anyone blaming the ref, the weather, The Terrace or injuries isn't being honest to himself. That goes for Potter, De Zerbi, Hurzeler, fans, media.

The comments on injuries are entirely relevant for this conversation. Had we not had them we'd be higher in the league, probably played better football and any comments suggesting Fab should be sacked would look even sillier than they do

 

[Han Solo]

The comments on injuries are entirely relevant for this conversation. Had we not had them we'd be higher in the league, probably played better football and any comments suggesting Fab should be sacked would look even sillier than they do

Yes. Every team gets injuries every season though so its like saying we'd probably be higher in the league with cyborgs from the future

 

[Bozza]

Yes. Every team gets injuries every season though so its like saying we'd probably be higher in the league with cyborgs from the future

No, no it's not.

Not every team gets the same number of injuries, for a variety of reasons - some self-inflicted and some not.

Not every team has their injuries significantly focused on one area of the team, and is able to "enjoy" them being more evenly spread throughout different playing positions.

The impact of injuries on teams is not equal.

 

[Brovion]

I did say "under RDZ" rather than "last season" (not sure this is aimed at me, but it seems it might be). Go and find a clip of Enciso's goal against Man City. Not the short clips that just show his finish, but the longer one that shows the build-up passing where it goes from Steele out to the right wing and back to Steele again and then to Colwill, while the City players tried and failed to dispossess ours.

We don't play like that anymore and I miss it.

Now, you might argue that that brand of football was on its way to being "found out". Man City's relative struggles this season would seem to bear that out. But it was (admittedly subjectively) more enjoyable to watch.

Well said. As well as Enciso's goal there was Gross's goal against Man U at Old Trafford (the one with all the passes where we had the ball for what seemed about five minutes). Again if you only see the last bit of it you can't appreciate the true majesty of it, but it was a fantastic sequence where we treated the Man U players like they were a set of traffic cones in a training ground exercise.

I am very much 'Fab In', and as others have said I'd have more respect for the 'Fab Out!' lobby if they posted after a good week rather than a bad one when we're all pissed off. Having said that I agree with you, the football isn't a patch on Peak De Zerbi. That season when we qualified for Europe we played, not just the best football I've ever seen Brighton play, but probably the best football I've ever seen full stop - and I include Brazil 1970 in that!

Yes it didn't always work, yes it all went to shit in the latter half of last season and yes we may have got worked out eventually anyway, but when it was at its best ..... oh my.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

Yes. Every team gets injuries every season though so its like saying we'd probably be higher in the league with cyborgs from the future

Nobody is crying about it, though OK I sighed pretty loudly when Georginio and Webby hobbled off v Forest.

But it's a pretty obvious line of logic isn't it?

A team who are able to field their first XI in most games (Forest have been widely cited) are going to finish higher than a team who are having to make enforced changes. Therefore the manager of the team with fewer injuries is going to look better relative to the manager with lots of injuries.

 

[oldboyroy]

Well said. As well as Enciso's goal there was Gross's goal against Man U at Old Trafford (the one with all the passes where we had the ball for what seemed about five minutes). Again if you only see the last bit of it you can't appreciate the true majesty of it, but it was a fantastic sequence where we treated the Man U players like they were a set of traffic cones in a training ground exercise.

I am very much 'Fab In', and as others have said I'd have more respect for the 'Fab Out!' lobby if they posted after a good week rather than a bad one when we're all pissed off. Having said that I agree with you, the football isn't a patch on Peak De Zerbi. That season when we qualified for Europe we played, not just the best football I've ever seen Brighton play, but probably the best football I've ever seen full stop - and I include Brazil 1970 in that!

Yes it didn't always work, yes it all went to shit in the latter half of last season and yes we may have got worked out eventually anyway, but when it was at its best ..... oh my.

Oh my indeed. Without doubt the best football I've seen a Brighton team play in my lifetime especially considering the opposition. Okay, not the mighty Manchester United but still Manchester United!