The9

Shouldn't this be a two-way thing? e.g. we hate Cardiff City due to Chopra at St Mary's. To be honest I've hated them since I can remember anyway.

Can't say I noticed, but then I'm not sure I watched anything other than my phone from the time we scored until the moment Huddersfield failed to concede. Come to think of it, I forgot Guly went off as well.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank the Soviets for the nice underground stations they probably insisted were built, and some cheap tube journeys : A very clean, empty train carriage, but utterly petrifying at night.

If there's one thing the Europa League guarantees, it's shat-loads of random European games.

It snowed the whole time I was in Bulgaria. On the bright side, it was a ski trip.

I think we asked (me being single and pretty miserable about life generally at the time ) and they were most Eastern European in their refusal to allow us to photograph her. I do have a pic of you and the wife in that batch, which I haven't included, but I can sling it up here if you like, along with a few of the people at the back of the rowdy coach as mentioned earlier (inc Fordy) !

Just checking

It's not entirely surprising we didn't win it, as the pitch (especially the penalty area at the Northam end) was cutting up in huge chunks earlier in the season (cost us a goal v Man U) which it's never done before. I think the dry weather has helped knit the top layer now, so the soil underneath can actually stay there. compared to (say) this bowling green from a previous January encounter with Man Utd.

I watched the whole thing live in the pub, they were absolute comedy gash for about an hour, but somehow dragged a point out of it even after playing terribly poorly for all that time. Greer coming back will give them stability, and hopefully they'll be trying to make the point to Huddersfield about their amazing passing football that they have so far failed to make in the 4 matches I've seen them in this season (the obvious 2, the Stoke FA Cup match I went to when our Rochdale match was called off, and Colchester on the box). That's not to say that just because they've been cack every time I've seen them that their timewasting and hoofing up the line to Elliott Bennett won't work, it clearly has on plenty of other occasions. Also, we didn't use the diamond against Hartlepool, Guly and Lallana/Forte played conventionally wide.

Did you live near the Palace then ?

I bet £2 on Hartlepool on Monday, entirely due to my expectation that we'd be a tired side not up for the visit of mediocre Hartlepool after the excitement of Brighton. That and the 6/1 odds. As soon as I saw that we'd made 6 changes I was significantly more at ease with Saints' chances, we hadn't weakened, we had players playing for their places, there was no obvious weakness out wide, and we had enough creativity to break the stubbornest side down.

Standing in the ground, I can assure you that none of us who were there will be able to assist with this ! Vague 4-3-3ness was about as specific as it got from my vantage point - and even then Hammond kept dropping into the back line to collect the ball with the full backs ahead of him and Fonte and Jaidi split to the widths of the area, which is hardly typical of a centre midfielder in a 4-3-3.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeek, one's broken ranks ! GET BACK IN LINE !!!! It's bad enough with what I can only assume are the newcomers at the back singing about us "going up" before it's a mathematical certainty. Living with the fear and expectation that we will find a way to fcvk it up is what separates Saints fans from the animals. Except the weasel.

Actually they didn't. They pulled most of them over to gather under a floodlight to the left of our fans at the end of the nearest stand at 1-0 up but left 4 behind the goal Brighton were defending. That group of ballboys didn't move from there for the rest of the match and as far as I can remember there weren't any around the pitch after the 80th minute or so. Even when they were there it was taking them 10 seconds to chuck the ball to any Saints player (I can't remember any Saints getting a ball from a ball boy in the attacking half) and about half a minute to get it to Ankegren. I'd love to see the stats on time the ball is in play for Brighton matches at home compared to everyone else this season.

Because it makes you all look like c()cks.

For the Huddersfield game Brighton have Greer back from suspension, which looking at the debacle that was their defending against Colchester is probably a good thing. They also, as suspected, gave a few fringe players a run out in that game. Whilst they were up for it against us, they were very much on the beach for Colchester - and Poyet's "well it doesn't matter now" type comments had encouraged it. I suspect they'll be more up for the last game at the Withdean against another one of the top sides that they haven't beaten yet.

And I look back at the 21 years it took Newport County AFC to get back to the level Newport County were at when they were liquidated in 1989, and decided it probably wasn't worth the risk.

Presumably all the people he made homeless when they demolished all the houses that used to be here before they built the palace - in order to create this view from his balcony :

A few photos :

Absolutely p155ed down with rain the whole time I was there, which was from lunchtime on the day of the game until the following Sunday (cheaper flights). I, like everyone, had a pee off the back of the stand down the grass bank. There was a fit Romanian policewoman who everyone was being very nice to, I went over to the segregation fence and gave a local five dollars for my Steaua 1986 European Cup Final scarf even though he only wanted two, and spent the whole time feeling like something akin to royalty by virtue of having a lot more money than anything cost. It was really strange to go to the shopping centres and see that consumer electrical goods, tvs, DVD players etc were the same price as at home, knowing that apart from the hotel, everything else was dirt cheap - a pint (Tuborg seemed popular) was the equivalent of 40p and apparently they'd hiked the prices up for our visit ! The coach we had had police outriders and was very boisterous to say the least, the coach park was so muddy the coaches were barely able to go forwards up the slight slope, the whole thing was under about 2 inches of water (except the massive uncovered drain which someone fell into thinking it was a puddle), and the whole occasion was absolutely mental and sodden. I also went to Ceausescu's Palace, which was just ridiculously ornate compared to the standard of living experienced by the people in the surrounding areas - apparently Romania no longer mines pink marble because it was all used in the palace, and there were 10 floors of underground bunker that were equally palatial. Also went to Dinamo's ground (dump) and got soaked by a passing car which went through an enormous mud-filled pothole. And it rained. Did I mention that it rained ?

I've got to say from my vantage point inside Withdean it was pretty difficult to see the nuances of how we were laid out, but Forte (and then Lallana) pinned Calderon into a defensive right back position rather than letting him get forward and that killed a lot of their options, as he just kept hoofing it at Barnes and Dickson and Fonte dealt with this easily most of the time. I noticed Hammond picking the ball up in the back line with Jaidi and Fonte split to opposite sides of the penalty area quite a lot as well. What I did find bizarre was Kelv's urges to release the ball rapidly when we were on for a point away to the Champions, and that it was Brighton were time-wasting for the 45 minutes it was 0-0. I guess that tells you more about the managers' mentalities than anything.

They are at home to Dagenham and Redbridge, I just can't see it myself.

It's like a more socially acceptable version of stadia. Can someone please just say Somerton Park and get it over with ? Also, Molineux was a crap-tip for away fans when I went there in 1993. Due to the redevelopment plan the away fans were in the far left corner of the South Stand in a section which actually faced the SIDE of their new stand - the very furthest right edge of the away section was in line with the touchline. The rest of the away fans, had they looked directly forwards wouldn't have been able to see the pitch. From the far left of that section, you could only see the back of the new stand, the car park, and the near penalty area at about 170 degrees. Next to the away section was a massive load of mesh and netting, and I think the home fans had already vacated the stand by then.

Despite their efforts to downplay it after losing, it appeared to be the most important match in Brighton's history from their club's attitude to it and the sniping and digging in the programme and media about comments from Adkins that none of us even remember. Once the match had started, their outright cheating was hugely aggravating, and it was this, along with the importance of the 3 points that made this match so important to Saints. It certainly wasn't us that turned it into a gloatfest. On the bright side, by the time we'd got back on the train we'd worked out the understated and appropriate response to them singing "Championes" was "Can we play you every week?". And by the time we'd changed trains at Fratton we'd been reminded what the real issue was.

Ooh, fancy, I don't even agree that you played the better football - in fact you were gash all over the park and unable to make any progress by passing - the only time you got anywhere was about 4 dribbles by Bennett and then Noone when he came on. Everything else was just a hoof up the line from Calderon and a race to chase the bouncing ball. Hilariously our first use of 4-3-3 and 3 year reserve Gobern making his only his third League start EVER was enough to completely negate your threat. I also don't agree that you "didn't want it" - unless cheating by throwing yourselves to the floor when players are nowhere near, waving cards to try and get people booked, pulling the ballboys out of the game with 10 minutes left when you're leading, the ballboys generally not giving the ball to Saints players throughout the match, laying on the floor for ages when barely injured, sending players to the far side of the pitch before substitutions, taking minutes at a time to get the ball back onto the pitch and generally timewasting from the first minute is what you do when you're not even interested... We also didn't "get knackered after 50 minutes last time" either, and after bettering you for 45 and then matching you for the second 45 at home it was nice to see us stuff you for 90 this time - although I'm guessing the ball was only in play for about 15 minutes in total thanks to your incredible time-wasting. If it hadn't been for Jaidi's pass to Bennett you wouldn't have had a shot of note in the first half and there was barely an effort to trouble Davis in the second either - whilst we had 5 good chances, a couple of scrambles, a blatant penalty for Lambert getting pulled down when clean through and THEN scored our goals. At least we're agreed that we deserved it.