How yer feeling?

whitelion said:

You don't need to query my credentials. I used to be the boy that was responsible for the corner flag in the south west corner in the sixties. At the end of the game I was responsible for the flag and took it back to the tunnel. First game 1959 and been all over and born in Brighton and grew up living near Portslade Station. Helped clear snow off the pitch in order to get the game on.
[MENTION=494]Kosh[/MENTION] you never gave a reason why you support Brighton but I can tell you I'm local and I've never wanted to support another club like a lot of my "mates" who thought it was cool to support Chelsea and Man Utd. I've always laughed at them and now we're back playing them and I think they're now confused as to where there loyalties lay. I don't have that problem.

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Okay, I think you've earned your stripes. My reasons are not too disimilar to yours re big teams and glory seeking locals. However, there is another deeply personal reason why I chose the Albion. it's between me and my brother, he being the typical none Manchester born Man Utd fan. The rest is probably, for a man of your intellect, fairly easy to piece together.

More interestingly, to me, you seem really angry about this and in general. With regard to this thread, I'm at a loss as to why geography should really matter when you choose to support the team in blue... when you're 3!

I apologise for supporting Brighton. But, and here's the rub, I will never support another team.

Take it easy.

Everyone lauding Bruno - and he tackled well. But a lot of his good play was thanks for March sitting very deep and pretty much playing alongside him as the second right back. It stopped us developing anything down the left. We can't keep sacrificing our threat down the right to protect Bruno. I think CH is worried about Bruno's lack of pace and we know he's looking for another right back.

Coincidentally, whilst Propper's passing was woeful at times, some of his positioning was superb and the passes that he spotted, whilst they didn't come off, was very encouraging. Not at all disappointed with him. Lots of promise.

Overall - very encouraged.

Couldn't Be Hyypia said:

Everyone lauding Bruno - and he tackled well. But a lot of his good play was thanks for March sitting very deep and pretty much playing alongside him as the second right back. It stopped us developing anything down the left. We can't keep sacrificing our threat down the right to protect Bruno. I think CH is worried about Bruno's lack of pace and we know he's looking for another right back.

Coincidentally, whilst Propper's passing was woeful at times, some of his positioning was superb and the passes that he spotted, whilst they didn't come off, was very encouraging. Not at all disappointed with him. Lots of promise.

Overall - very encouraged.

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Well said... it's nice to read another sensible contribution and one that makes a refreshing perspective re Proppers challenging debut.

Was that okay? God I'm nervous now, you know - re not being born under the floodlights, landing on the corner flag in the good old Goldstone... God rest her soul... Christ! I'm welling up.

ALL THINGS BRIGHTON BEAUTIFUL... where's my Albion pyjamas?

Icy Gull said:

Can I hazard a guess? Under your Albion pillow slip or Albion duvet?

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Nah mate I've got a Man City duvet, a Sheffield United pillow case and a Toon Army branded hot water bottle. I only wear my Albion pjs because I'm so confused re where my loyalties lie?!?! :/ I only wish i'd been born a stones throw from the Goldstone... God; I'd be simple then.

��

spence said:

Don't waste your breath mate. The bloke is a tool.Other than that you are right.

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I wasn't actually having a go at him (didn't follow the argument), I was just making light of the fact that I'd be supporting the worst club if I followed the rule.

whitelion said:

No your local league football team is Brighton any other questions?

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But why limit it to league teams? Why doesn't the rule apply to local non-league clubs, don't they deserve support?

whitelion said:

No your local league football team is Brighton any other questions?

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Nope, all good. Thanks for clarifying the rules on football support. You should get them printed up and handed out to everyone in the UK, can't have people making their own choices about what they like. It'd be anarchy.

I am the picture of optimism this morning. I don't think the three teams below us or level with us will be though. The pressure in Newcastle with Benitiez seemingly fuming about money/players, Palace who with another defeat will start worrying (privately anyway) that De Boer may not be the answer and West Ham whose signings have made no difference at all, and surely its only a matter of time before Stoke plunge into crisis with Hughes. We will struggle this year, but I think the new signings will improve us and we have already seen that defensively we have the ability to make teams have to work hard to get anything. Duffy is my only worry.. just a little concerned that against Torres and Jesus he was lost as they just drifted off his back to get the space. I know Dunk scored the OG, but Duffy was marking Jesus as they ran back into the box.. that said of course he offers us presence and options with his height/power in the air which will be needed as well. Determined to enjoy it.

Kosh said:

Okay, I think you've earned your stripes. My reasons are not too disimilar to yours re big teams and glory seeking locals. However, there is another deeply personal reason why I chose the Albion. it's between me and my brother, he being the typical none Manchester born Man Utd fan. The rest is probably, for a man of your intellect, fairly easy to piece together.

More interestingly, to me, you seem really angry about this and in general. With regard to this thread, I'm at a loss as to why geography should really matter when you choose to support the team in blue... when you're 3!

I apologise for supporting Brighton. But, and here's the rub, I will never support another team.

Take it easy.

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I think I'm in trouble too. Coming from London. Based on the warped logic of one person on this thread, I shouldn't be supporting Albion either. I'll have to confirm with him who I should support.

In answer to your original question, I agree with much of what you said. We did okay and didn't get thrashed, which was the key starting point for Saturday's match. The next couple of away matches will be an interesting way of measuring where we are (and we have a key couple of weeks trying to get a couple more new signings in before the deadline).

I should be an AFC Wimbledon fan according to thus quiz.

https://uquiz.com/LnnOVM?embed=False

whitelion said:

I still believe birth place is the dominant factor.

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So many questions...
- Nearest team to birthplace eg hospital or nearest team to parents' home at time of birth?
- Nearest in a straight line or by road; or perhaps by public transport?
- If you are born abroad is it the nearest league team to your foreign place of birth?
- If your nearest team goes out of the league do you have to swap and if so is it to the next nearest team to your place of birth or the nearest to where you live when the orginal goes out of the league?
- Conversely if a new team enters the league and they are nearer than your original team, do you have to swap?

I'll probably have more when these are cleared up but I'm anxious to make sure that I am doing the right thing.

Any way - back to the OP - How am I feeling? Hot, hot, hot!

whitelion said:

I should be an AFC Wimbledon fan according to thus quiz.

https://uquiz.com/LnnOVM?embed=False

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Doesn't everyone get that?

Says my enemies are Chelsea and MK Dons, so got that right at least.

People having a pop at Stephens and Propper really need to lay off a bit, we were totally out numbered centrally , and when we got on the ball in there had nothing to hit up front or wide as our wide men were largely playing full back.

If we get another pacey winger in and a forward who can run in behind it will stop teams pushing high up against make them drop off a bit and give our midfield a few yards to play in.

We wont see a side as good at ball possesion and closing down again this season i suspect.

70 mins we held out against a top top side. I am still quite optimistic of our chances given 2 more quality additions.

Finchley Seagull said:

I think I'm in trouble too. Coming from London. Based on the warped logic of one person on this thread, I shouldn't be supporting Albion either. I'll have to confirm with him who I should support.

In answer to your original question, I agree with much of what you said. We did okay and didn't get thrashed, which was the key starting point for Saturday's match. The next couple of away matches will be an interesting way of measuring where we are (and we have a key couple of weeks trying to get a couple more new signings in before the deadline).

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Yep - he's a wee bit demanding in the old geographical allegiance stakes, heh heh!

Totally agree with your points, second paragraph, let's see what the next couple of outings produce

You have my blessing to support the Albion.

Finchley Seagull said:

I think I'm in trouble too. Coming from London. Based on the warped logic of one person on this thread, I shouldn't be supporting Albion either. I'll have to confirm with him who I should support.

In answer to your original question, I agree with much of what you said. We did okay and didn't get thrashed, which was the key starting point for Saturday's match. The next couple of away matches will be an interesting way of measuring where we are (and we have a key couple of weeks trying to get a couple more new signings in before the deadline).

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But it's not "warped logic" surely you can't fail to see that the majority of our fan base comes from Sussex in general and more specifically Brighton & Hove.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...two-tribes-fans-revel-journey-premier-league/

Muesli Mountain, they call Hanover. Once a faded maze of Victorian terraces, it is now the gentrified Sussex equivalent of the Venetian island of Burano, where, famously, each fisherman’s cottage is painted a different colour. It is 2017 Brighton all over: a suburb reflecting the full rainbow of society, where health-conscious bohemians and lifelong residents coexist happily enough, and where the characterful Constant Service pub sits alongside a house that once passed itself as a ‘poetry brothel’.

Few are so much a fixture of this hilly, vibrant enclave as Dot Purvis. It is not simply that she has worked in the cafeteria at the nearby Brighton General Hospital for 27 years, but that she has decided, in her dotage, to deck out her home on Ryde Road as a shrine to her beloved football club.

The facade is in Brighton’s signature blue tone, while a collection of Seagulls scarves, dating back to the promotion to Division One in 1979, adorn every spare surface. About the only concession to a life beyond Brighton and Hove Albion is the “Save Our NHS” sticker in the living-room window.

Ring the doorbell and Dot appears, obligingly, in her club top. Aptly for somebody with her sense of decor, she has a mischievous sense of humour where little is quite as it seems. “Five years ago, I lost my husband, so I thought, ‘Right, get the paint pot out!’ ” she says. “I had a few coppers, so I had it painted blue.” Interpreting this wacky move as a response to her sense of loss, I ask whether her late husband shared her level of devotion to the cause. “No. I’ve had two husbands. Neither of them was remotely interested.”

The morning after Brighton’s first elevation to the top flight in 38 years, she is giddy with glee. As a dyed-in-the-walls fan, Dot has seen it all: the joys of the early Eighties, the brush with oblivion in 1997, when Brighton needed a final-day draw at Hereford to preserve league status, and, most recently, their gloriously improbable resurgence. She is fond of the Amex Stadium, their elegant enormo-dome in bucolic Falmer, but her most cherished memories are traced invariably to the Goldstone Ground, which Brighton called home for 95 years.

Around the ground tribute is paid to Chris Hughton, the architect of promotion “I still remember one incident in the South Stand. It was a night game, the visiting goalkeeper was bouncing the ball up and down, and then one of our players came and kicked it in.”

Such recollections are, alas, now buried far beneath the concrete and plastic of a Hove retail park. The Goldstone, a raucous old shed redolent of a time long before the corporate hijacking of public space became fashionable, was demolished 20 years ago and has given way to a Toys R Us. The cynicism of that move, not to mention the dislocation it created – with a two-year switch to Gillingham, 70 miles away, and a brief stay at the Withdean, a hovel that had been everything from an athletics arena to a zoo – was such that some locals have refused even to set foot in the area.

Stella Pollard, landlady of the Railway Bell, will maintain her 'home fans only' policy next season. To spend any time in Brighton is to see a clear contrast among its fan base. On one side are the habitués, such as the delightfully eccentric Ms Purvis, and on the other is an emerging band of affluent supporters, usually not long transplanted from London, who have helped swell the Amex to its 30,000 capacity. Already, the waiting list for the next tranche of season tickets is measured in months, not weeks. Martin Hill, who has retired to the area and has wasted no time since promotion in visiting the club shop to stock up on the latest kit, says that he understands why.

“The catchment area, all the way from Eastbourne to Worthing and beyond, is massive. I’ve got friends who are coming in to watch Brighton from north of Horsham. There’s a whole south-east corridor that is still expanding.

Season ticket holder Martin Hill shows off the promotion season shirt he has just purchased at the Amex “Traditionally, most of the Brighton supporters I’ve known have had first or second clubs. Brighton was always the local club, but they were never taken especially seriously. That has all changed. Younger kids, rather than walking around in Manchester or Arsenal shirts, are now seen in Brighton shirts. Students and tourists, too – they are all starting to gravitate towards the club.”

Hill has kept a season ticket at West Ham, paying £4,000 for the latest one, but these days loyalties are anything but divided. “There are two distinct groups: those who are born-and-bred Brighton and those who have come down to London-next-the-Sea, but still adopted the club and taken it to their hearts. I am in that second group. I hate what West Ham have done, whereas I love what Brighton have done. West Ham have sold out: there’s that monolith of a stadium, with no atmosphere, and it has driven my kids and I away. Brighton, though, are still passionate, still local.”

Promotion merchandise is already in the club shop. The connection between club and community was vividly underscored by the celebrations on Monday night, when three Brighton players – Jamie Murphy, Jiri Skilak and Oliver Norwood – took a train with fans into the city centre and spent their journey crowd-surfing.

Little wonder that star winger Anthony Knockaert, the Championship player of the year, has committed to staying. The solidarity here is so palpable that several of his team-mates, as well as manager Chris Hughton, travelled to Lille last November to attend the funeral of his father. “For them to cancel training was a thing I will never forget,” he says. “Even now, I don’t know how to thank them. To me they are not just some team-mates, but friends forever. I owe this club a lot. That’s why I give every single bit of my life on the pitch – they deserve it.”

Kevin Falconer owns a scooter shop and has had his own Vespa painted in the club's colours. Already, many away fans have circled their date in Brighton next season in their diaries, as if to mark a pleasant sojourn by the seaside, where the potential for trouble is negligible.

Stella Pollard, landlady of the Railway Bell, is expecting trade to be brisk, even if she claims that she will continue to enforce her ‘home fans only’ rule. She called time at 12.10 on Monday night, while the players’ party at the nearby Bohemia bar was still going strong. Kevin Falconer, managing director of CD Scooters over on Lewes Road, admits she is still feeling worse the wear after the revelries. It is at this point that he shows off his brand-new Vespa, resplendent in – what else? – a blue-and-white colour scheme.

Falconer's gesture is just one madcap gesture of many. The longer this dream Brighton run lasts, the more its disciples’ love affair will deepen.

Kosh said:

Yep - he's a wee bit demanding in the old geographical allegiance stakes, heh heh!

Totally agree with your points, second paragraph, let's see what the next couple of outings produce

You have my blessing to support the Albion.

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You sure you're not around 10 years old?

whitelion said:

You sure you're not around 10 years old?

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Yeah, pretty sure.

I'm also pretty sure you're very, very weird.

So; I'm adding you to the old ignore list.

Have fun Hun xxxx