Brighton shock?

Leeds United first faced Brighton & Hove Albion on 24 September 1960 – almost exactly seven months after I was born – in a Second Division match away at The Goldstone Ground. We lost 2.1 that day and have lost more than we’ve won against them.

We certainly haven’t beaten them very often in more recent times, have we? In fact, LUFC have only been victorious twice in the last 18 league encounters since leaving League One in 2010, and each of those was at Elland Road.

We didn’t manage to beat them in our previous six Premier League matches and have never won at the AMEX.

Just by way of cutting through the doom and gloom for a moment, we didn’t lose to them at all during our Glory Days (mainly because we were, literally, leagues apart!)

Unfortunately, I (and most non-French writers) still tend to think of them as a ‘small club’ despite their league results, cup runs, and remarkable progress since returning to the city in 1999 after opting to sell their ground two years earlier to have a little break in the Kent countryside.

It is even more incredible, given that they sell their best players to Chelsea every summer and yet their form doesn’t seem to be that badly affected because of it. Usefully, it doesn’t really improve things that much at Stamford Bridge either.

I remember clearly our matches at the Withdean Stadium, a horrible little open-air sports ground, remembered by some for the teeming rain, but by most for Fabian Delph’s winner, on 17 January 2009, when he ran practically the length of the ground and the rest of the East Sussex coastline to score a wonderful goal and seal a 2.0 win.

In fact, we did even better the following season when we’d got our act together, packed our bags, and decided to leave the League One comedy tour, winning away 3.0. Our goals that day came from Robert Snodgrass, Jermaine Beckford and Neil Kilkenny. Ah, those names, those goals, the last time we won there!

It feels like yesterday, doesn’t it, and yet it was almost 16 years ago.

Brighton moved into the AMEX just over a year later, in 2011. Although our first trips to the seaside were accompanied by excited expectation, disappointment has quickly rolled in with the black clouds, like so many days out on the south coast.

Brighton, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth… what could possibly go wrong?

The young Seagulls flew out of Arsenal’s reach for much of last night’s League Cup match at Highbury, which was 0.0 at half-time, before the young Gunners blew them up. Hopefully, there will be one or two tired legs, but, for many observers, it would still be a shock if we got anything down there.

Our increased physicality and undoubted competitiveness have already been proven, though. I think we might give them the best match for years.

‘Are we there yet?’ Well, not yet, but we did beat a team from London last Friday and, hopefully, Danny Welbeck will be just as wasteful on Saturday as he was in THAT cup tie at THAT place across the Pennines. I’m not clutching at straws; they’re hollowed-out rabbits’ feet, honestly...

The tide has to turn sooner or later, doesn’t it?
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Read more in my book: The Leeds United Story, available on Amazon in print and digital formats, also Kindle Unlimited.​

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