Well… shit.

Poor old no one. The planets aligned and we tore a new arsehole for a bunch of objectionable, overly confident arseholes.

Thank you Marc Cucurella. Your presence allowed everyone to boo and jeer, and broke the seal of so many sitting there wondering whether making some noise would make them stand out amongst their seated surroundings.

We all booed, we all jeered, and we all reveled in this orgasmic delight of justice being done, for once and for all. They can never take this away from us, ever, and we'll never forget how this feels.

We hugged acquaintances, we jumped on friends, and we joined in with celebrating a unity of common purpose, the like of which I'm not sure we've ever had at Falmer, for a Premier League game, ever before.

The first goal said it all. Cucu sitting on his arse behind the goal line, looking at the ball that Leo fired past him… and with that the tide of positivity expanded infectiously, and we carried the whole city along with our passion, our voices, our sense of indignation, and our overwhelming joy.

Match reports aside, the sheer synchronicity of a P**e cunt putting through his own net, of Cucu cutting the corners of the pitch during his ‘Wanker!!’ accompanied walk past the North Stand; the almost religious and uplifting singing of ‘C*l P**e, fuck off home!’ when Gallagher had to do the same made for a sense of fulfilment that we will always want, again and again.

The ‘celebration music’ post-match was the only thorn in what should have been a truly explosive roar and cacophony of sound, but it wasn't to be and was denied to us… but I'm splitting hairs in the outpouring of the desperate and righteous ‘fuck you!’ spirit that we all needed SO much.

We move on, but our season already has its highlight, no matter where we finish. These days belong to us, we've earned them, and RdZ has brought us together in the most emphatic and tangible way possible.

Oh, and fuck Potter anyway.

JBD (he/him/wanker)

29th October 2022 was one of the great Amex days.

I didn’t blame Potter and everyone else Chelsea headhunted for going, but god did I want us to win.

I wanted us to beat Chelsea so so much. I talked openly with people about it. Something I never normally do it case that ‘jinxes’ it. I’d usually say things to be level-headed, but I so wanted this win and couldn’t help but tell the world.

What a game. I’m trying to think about another game aside from fixtures vs them that had a whole other edge to them. Sheffield Wednesday had that a bit, but this almost was as good as beating London’s armpit of a football club.

We deserved the win, as a club, and as a set of fans. A win not over Potter, Bruno or Cucurella. No, this was a win over Chelsea Football Club. The body corporate, the business without ideas of its own that tried (successfully) to buy our talent, but cannot buy our culture. ‘You’re just a shit Brighton Hove Albion’ we sang. My favourite song of the day.

My window cleaner is a Swansea fan and when Potter joined us he was acid about how he had departed them. He too felt he’d left midway through a project. At the time I thought Potter was entitled to go on to bigger and better things, no disrespect to Swansea, but he’s ours now.

I now know how he felt. How quickly we may have started to forget what it’s like to be a #teamslikeswansea fan. We forget that feeling at our peril.

So where are we now? Hovering on the edge of European football? Always fearful of losing our best talent? Making millions every year in player and staff sales? Going through this loss of good people time and time again?

Are we a long term sustainable and profitable club in the clown car finance world of professional football? Where half the teams in the Premier League still lose money each season? If so, we have come a long, long way together.

These past 6 weeks have been tumultuous. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

UTA

Mess / @messageismyname

Perhaps Graham needs a history lesson.

Brighton & Hove Albion are 121 years old. We are yet to win a major trophy in our entire history. We are constantly reminded about our place in the domestic game. Graham said as such. In hindsight, we should have seen that he felt his standing in the game was above ours.

If we as fans had done what some misguided members of the press had claimed, we should have rolled the red carpet out, chanted his name incessantly for 90 minutes and given him a cheeky hand shandy on the way out. Little old Brighton should have been grateful just to have had him. We are at the bottom of the food chain (Potter's words) and our sole purpose is to facilitate the success of the Big Six. How dare we dream! Two minutes on Twitter would have highlighted why that was never going to be the case.

We are angry, we are hurt. This is a man who stripped the club of its backroom staff and seems hell bent on removing anything that is not bolted to the floor. A man who had us believing that he had bought into Tony’s dream and was committed and there for the long term. Who saw the vision. How dare we exercise our feelings on this! Fuck him.

The atmosphere yesterday was absolutely rocking. From the warm-up to the final whistle, the AMEX was a symphony of noise, turning a typically quiet West Upper into a raucous place to be. Arsenal in 2018 and our playoff draw with Sheffield Wednesday in 2016 are the only two games that felt like they had an atmosphere even close. It was a fortress. This was a fanbase riled up, ready to show what he had left behind. There have only ever been a handful of games that felt we were going to win before a ball was kicked. This was one of them.

Graham seemed genuinely shocked at the reaction from the Albion faithful, with post-match interviewers seemingly getting under his famously paper-thin skin. His interviews gave the air of a man who felt we should have been grateful to have had him as a coach.

Incorrect. We are grateful to Dick Knight and those who saved us from extinction. We are grateful to Chris Hughton, who, off the back of the platform built off others, took us to the Premier League. And we are grateful to Tony Bloom, whose vision and unwavering support has taken us to heights that seemed unthinkable 20 years ago. But not him.

Prior to yesterday, Brighton had never beaten Chelsea in a league fixture. He has added a fresh page in our history books, but perhaps not in the way he had hoped. Perhaps he needs a fresh history lesson in future?

Iain Budgen / @iainbudgen

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