That result in full; three goals, one ham, one happy Englishman to nil

One of the bigger factors in contemplating making the move here permanently, quite genuinely, was the fact that I'd no longer be a regular at the Albion. This of course played no part in my partner's thinking but for me it was, in all seriousness, quite a big deal. Waiting 34 years to get back to the top flight and I promptly leave the country when we finally get there. Something has to stand in its stead.

Step forward the unique charms of Club Deportivo Viana do Bolo, the village's own team, made up entirely of locals or near-locals, all, of course, playing for nothing more than the love of the game.

The Premier League this isn't, but that's to ignore its very different but no less enjoyable attractions. I pay €20 per year to attend all the games. I rock up at two minutes to kick-off and I know several of the players. I even, rather ludicrously given how terrible a footballer I am, play with and against several of them on Thursdays.

The ground itself may lack The Amex's comfort and facilities, but it sits against a spectacular backdrop of the Galician mountains. Aircraft contrails line the sky diagonally to the pitch, all heading towards a Madrid that's distant in every sense.

There was fevered anticipation ahead of the ham raffle.
The game, I mean. Sorry - ahead of the game.

Given the local population, the turn-out can be pretty good if the weather's nice and the team playing well. A hundred or so represents a decent percentage of the local populace, remember, and many of them are even there for the football. I say many, because it seems to me that the real draw for some of them is the half-time raffle for a ham. Yep - you read that correctly. Not for Viana a cash prize or a signed shirt. Here the only prize, apart from special occasions when there may be an infinitely less desirable second prize, is a whole ham. Here's one for which they drew earlier:

Oooh, let's 'ave a look at what ya could'a won.

Ome Euro per ticket (I always buy three) on entry gives you a shot at something that'd cost good money in the shop. Now my missus, who goes only occasionally, won the thing the first and only time she saw a game last season. This, coupled with the fact that no matter who wins it, they get absolutely slaughtered by everybody else (no pun intended), meant that I've been gently dreading ever actually winning the thing, despite my regular attendance.

But so it was, this weekend just passed, that my number was drawn. The chap who actually pulled out the winning ticket threw it to the floor in disgust, and so began the choi-oiking from all and sundry. 

Now I readily accept that, in a group of Galicians yelling over each other, I don't understand some of the Gallego I'm hearing. But I'm fairly sure I received a number of suggestions as to what I could do with said ham, and I'm reasonably certain they weren't all culinary advice. Even today, sitting in a bar as I write this over a coffee, people who weren't even at the game are coming up to me. "Fuck sake, I can't believe a bloody Ingles won the ham. Don't talk to me..." News travels fast in such a small place as Viana, and the winning of such a prize counts as news here. I'm not taking it personally, of course - I'm merely paying the same price everybody who wins it has to pay. You should have heard the grief the poor chap who won it twice in the same season got.

Anyway, back to the game. After the controversy of the guiri winning the raffle, the crowed swelled further for the second half with the arrival of a number of spectators who'd missed the first half to attend a funeral. You don't get that in the Premier League either. I'm pleased to report that the good guys won 3-0 and sit top of the league, which is a relief to me because, naturally, the first season I watched them after moving here, they were relegated and I saw only two victories all season. I was beginning to worry that I was a bit of a Jonah.

I never got any stick for that, though. Bring bad luck to the team, yeah - by all means. But for fuck's sake don't go winning the ham.

4-0, 2-0, 3-0, 3-0

Our last four results, all in our favour! A frankly easy win against Exeter last night with some lovely football played. It's a bizarre feeling, heading toward Brighton for home games lately expecting to win, and then having those expectations justified by the players! I'm not quite used to it yet.

'Nightmare at London Road'

So sang the massed Albion fans behind the goal at Peterborough as Posh's self-styled 'Cup Final' went horribly, horribly wrong for them. I'm just running out of superlatives for the way the boys are playing at the moment. I've been going for 25 years and it was the best performance away from home I've ever seen. But fans who have been going since the 50s were saying the same thing. We utterly, utterly thrashed them. Their goalkeeper, who was their man of the match by a country mile, and who made a string of saves, including a penalty, to stop the score becoming an absolute embarrassment, had been quoted as saying that Albion played 'total football'!!!

It's an absolute, unbridled joy to watch at the moment. Passing, movement, goals in the side, three clean sheets in a row, 8 points clear at the top of the league which is otherwise bunched up. I can't remember enjoying it so much. Not even when we won back to back titles and we had Zamora, the best player I've ever seen in a Brighton shirt, did we go to grounds like Peterborough, the top scorers in the entire country and averaging 3.5 goals per game at home, and completely dominate them.

Some comments from their podcast: "Men against boys," "They dominated from minute one," "Some of their short, quick passing was superb." A Posh fan came up to me at the station afterwards, shook my hand and said we'd 'shown them how to play football'.

It makes us Albionites want to burst with pride, frankly. What an absolute pleasure it is to watch them and write about them at the moment. We're at home to Exeter on Tuesday night. Surely, surely the wheels have to come off at some point, don't they?

This is getting ridiculous

Most Albion fans had a bit of a bad feeling about today's game, if the web chat was any barometer. The sort of game we've cocked up in the past when we've been expected to win. Well, we brushed Yeovil aside today. 2-0 and comfortable. 78% possession. 78%! That is outrageous. Another clean sheet, a cracker from Calderon, and six points clear at the top.

To say Peterborough looks like a good game on Saturday would be a considerable understatement. Thousands of us going again, a covered terrace, and first against third. Bring it on!

Reasons to be cheerful - 1, 2, 3, 4

Oh my giddy aunt, I wish I'd held that Henry V quote back for the Charlton game. What I witnessed this afternoon was the best Albion performance, certainly in an away game, since I can't remember when, frankly. Passing the ball beautifully, defending resolutely, attacking with verve and invention and basically completely outclassing a Charlton side on their own turf, and all in front of over 3500 Brighton fans. The lads even had the common decency to stick three of the goals into the net at our end. Coupled with Palace losing (again) it was just about the perfect Saturday.

We really are looking like a decent side now. If you pay much mind to these things, the statistics will show you one league defeat all season, 8 games unbeaten in the league and 63% possession today, away from home. The Charlton fans, those of them who stayed to the end at any rate, knew what they'd seen. All credit to them for applauding our lads off as they left the field, they were in no doubt as to the quality of our performance either.

We're blossoming under Poyet. The belief in the side is evident, his tactics working, the squad sufficiently deep and containing enough quality to be able to rest players when he sees fit (Elphick and LuaLua both benched today, for example), and the football is an absolute joy to behold, especially on days like this. One of those rare ones today, where you're rewarded for loyalty and commitment during times when things are, frankly, a bit shit. What happy blue and white striped bunnies we all are this evening.

The linesman's an onanist of the first order, chaps...

I promised mention of the apalling theft of two points by an absolutely diabolical officiating decision at the very end of the game on Saturday, and here it is. First, I'll apply the caveat that I absolutely understand that if we'd have taken any one more of yet another string of chances which went begging during the preceding 89 minutes, it would have rendered the officiating inompetence a broadly irrelevant irritant. No more, no less.

However, the fact remains that the single most frustrating thing, for me at least, as a football fan, is when the result of a game is influenced or changed by the refereeing team. Great if it works in your lot's favour but it never bloody does, does it? First, it appears that pushing your elbow into the face of a centre half, in direct contravention of the clear instruction in the law, now warrants a yellow card, not a red one. So we should have been playing ten men for a significant chunk of the game. But we'll let go the clear implication that the ref and linesman had absolutely no idea what had gone on and therefore settled on some sort of compromise that they thought would please everybody, to concentrate on the utterly bewildering decision they made in injury time to award Bournemouth a penalty.

A free kick for handball, which may or may not have struck a Brighton hand in the first place, was given by the ref outside the penalty area. The linesman then intervened to tell the ref, wrongly, that it was inside the box. So we had the extremely rare sight of a ref changing a decision he'd already given, ultimately to deny us the win. As I said, I recognise that we should have had the game won by then anyway, but the fact is that without the officials giving this penalty the score would have been 1-0. The process by which that score had been arrived at, in terms of how many chances each side had created to arrive at it, is broadly irrelevant. Only the fact of the matter remains - it was 1-0 and therefore the decision was absolutely crucial and result-changing.

It's bloody frustrating and absolutely typifies the standard of officiating at our level, which is, frankly, shocking. Again, I realise they have the hardest job in football, and I wouldn't want to do it for all the money in the world, but why is it that when they make mistakes like this it's always, always a mistake which ends up changing the damn result?

Missed chances the story of our season

Being in Brighton for the weekend I found myself in the unusual position of being able to listen to live commentary of Albion's trip to Tranmere on Radio Sussex. Why this is possible on the radio but not the internet is beyond me. Sitting at a computer on a Saturday and trying to get live Radio Sussex commentary of Brighton games invariably results in full commentary of Crawley Town or Eastbourne Borough. I have absolutely no idea why that should be the case but it's bloody frustrating.

Anyway, an utterly dominant first half in which chances were created and spurned, Glenn Murray's wonder volley excepted, was followed by the inevitable response from a determined opponent who waited until three minutes from time before delivering a deserved but frustrating equaliser. It should have been game over at half time so we were left to hear Poyet bemoaning the fact that it felt like a defeat.

I suppose in one way this is a measure of our progress. Given our absolutely abysmal record on the Wirral, we'd usually take a point up there if offered it, I think. So to go there, dominate one half and come away disappointed with a point shows that we've come on and expectations have been raised. But it's also slightly worrying in that this performance exemplified us as a team at the moment. We missed a host of chances, and Barnes, who's already divided the support as to his merits, seems the main culprit where this is concerned in particular.

But we're not losing, we're still top and we've a home game to come on Saturday, albeit a toughie against third-placed Bournemouth. We're actually on Sky, no less, which itself give cause for concern for the performance. But I'd rather be grumbling about missed chances to win at Tranmere and go five points clear at the top, than grumbling about being bottom three, leaking goals alarmingly and worrying about relegation.

Cheers, Hilary

I won't bore those of you not interested in the so far magnificent achievements of my three-points-clear-at-the-top team after last night's battling victory over Brentford, because something interesting in the programme caught my attention.

A local resident, a Mrs Hilary Ball (oddly appropriately), had taken the trouble of writing to the club to congratulate our fans on their behaviour during our ludicrously drawn-out tenure at Withdean. She wrote, "I had visions of beer bottles, cans and all sorts of rubbish dumped in the front garden, maybe windows smashed if a visiting team lost..." (No need to worry on that score most weeks...) "...and not being able to park outside my own house. I'm pleased to say none of this happened."

This is mainly due to the fact that, since a team of supporters volunteers to do a litter-pick in the area round the stadium after every home game, the area is actually cleaner after we play each match than before kick-off. It's one of the countless arrangements we had to come up with to get permission to play there in the first place. Her letter was in stark contrast to some of the other residents who must think we're no less than the spawn of Satan, as my own experience once showed.

I was walking the route from Preson Park station to the ground, an unpaved, muddy path through woods at the back of a line of private residences, on my way to a home game a couple of seasons ago, when a resident happened to come out of his garden to collect an empty cardboard beer crate that somebody had thoughtlessly dumped in the lane. Spotting my Brighton shirt, he gave me what can only be described as the skunk eye and muttered about 'hooligans dumping rubbish outside his house' in my direction. This could not go unchallenged, of course. I asked him why he was addressing his complaint at me, since I was clearly not the person who'd dumped the box. Again his eyes went to my shirt. That was all I needed to know.

The shirt had weighed, measured and found me wanting in his eyes. More than that, simply because I had the shirt of my football club on, he clearly viewed me as not only exactly the same as the dick who'd dumped the box outside his house, but somehow personally responsible for it. I told him, politely, that a shirt does not a boor make, that whoever dumped the box would be a dick whether they sported a football shirt or not. Whether they ever even watched football or not, in fact. But this clearly didn't fit with his preconception of the shaven-headed, drunken, inarticulate, snarling wretch that is doubtless his exemplar of fans everywhere, so back into his house he went, huffing and puffing.

So as we near the end of our tenure there, I hope that fans and local residents have learned something about each other. We're not all mindless hoolies, and they don't all hate us. Mrs Ball even complimented the new stadium blossoming on the hillside in Falmer, saying, "It will be a magnificent building when it is finished and a huge asset to the city. I might even be tempted to come and watch my first professional football match when you move."

Good on you, Mrs B. Glad we've been good tenants. Unfortunately though, should we leave Withdean this season with some silverware, Mr Beer Box will doubtless assume we've nicked it.

Sandaza way to do it

6th minute of injury time. 1-1 in a game we'd largely dominated and missed plenty of chances, against good oppos. Step forward Senor Sandaza, on his home debut, hitting the net with almost the last kick of the game from sufficiently close in that the media would usually joke 'he's deadly from there', sending us top in the process. Cue bedlam in the stands. The sort of thing that you see against you all too often, but very rarely seems to happen in your favour. What a moment.

I've heard people worrying that we've 'gone top too early'. What??! We're top! Top! It builds confidence, gives the players something else to play for (ie staying there) and it's where you want to bloody be. Some people can find negative things even in being top of the league.

Home to Brentford tomorrow night and a chance to consolidate, if we don't balls it up. It's all rather fun at the moment.

Eating up the Greens

Make that three clean sheets in a row, second in the table and off the top on goal difference only. A thoroughly professional win at Plymouth in what seemed, looking at the stats and the post-game comments, like a deserved and dominating one.

Most encouraging. A Plymouth fan apparently noted that we played 'tippy-tappy' football but still scored two 'agricultural' goals. I find this particularly encouraging - the passing game has not been, and will not be, abandoned by Poyet, but they're also obviously hitting the right ball at the right time. Our second goal involved Bennet outpacing his man to get to a ball into the channel, a quick cross and goal. So we can mix it up, clearly.

We've also, oddly, scored our goals lately thus: 2-0-2-0-2-0-2. So we're due a zero, if that sequence is to continue, at home on Saturday. However, a) I don't believe these sequences are any more than statistical quirks which have no bearing on the actual outcome in advance and b) even if I did, we've not yet failed to score at home in a league game. So you can prove anything with statistics. The only number that really matters is the one alongside your position in the table.

This is all going worryingly well. Dismal defeat on Saturday will surely follow, to give the naysayers who so love their fishing on the internet something to crow about. But I've said before, I'll take 12th in May if we play decent football every week, and so far I've got no complaints at all.

Back to the important stuff

A flurry of negative stuff on NSC recently requires a bit of redress. People starting threads like 'What's the point of Ashley Barnes' and 'Poyet is a clown', even if done solely to get a rise out of other fans, cannot go entirely unanswered.

A few simple facts will suffice:

3 points off the leaders' total, with a game in hand.

One league defeat so far this season, at then top Sheff Weds, tight and unfortunate.

Only five goals conceded, behind only Carlisle as the tightest defence in the division so far. Quite why so we're focusing on the perceived shortage of clean sheets is beyond me.

Unbeaten at home in the league so far, and above all, we're playing football. The ball is on the floor most of the time and even though we're not always fluent in doing so, people would do well to remember that we're a League One team, not bloody Barcelona, so that's inevitable.

Poyet's doing well, the players are behind him, the start to the season has been positive. I realise it's just a start, we should not get too dizzy at this stage of the season, but we have plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

And I thought I was negative...

So a tight and, by all accounts, unfortunate defeat away at Sheffield Wednesday, one of the teams most fancied to challenge for this season's title. Not good enough for some of our fans who clearly seem to think it's vital to be top of the table in the first month of the season. There's a thread on Northstandchat in which the author claims we should 'write off the season' and that our squad lacks depth and 'we won't challenge with a bench like that'. Well do me a favour. When I was a kid, you never even saw a league table until six games in, and even then you got a quick look at the top six, nobody took them too seriously. But now in the new era of instant gratification and shortening attention spans, success and failure must be weighed and measured immediately.

Well, not for me. It's utterly, utterly ludicrous to make any comment whatsoever about the entire season in August, for God's sake. AUGUST! There are nine months ahead of us. A transfer window, yet to open because the current one hasn't even closed yet, dozens of managerial changes, injuries, suspensions, who knows what drama to be played out yet, but some soothsayer within the Brighton support is sufficiently prescient to make a declaration on the season already? I'd venture a guess that this 'sage' is in his early 20s at the absolute oldest, and his jaundiced view is just another symptom of the culture of immediacy that surrounds us now (it's all the fault of mobile phones, I tell you...)

I might run a book on when the first call for Poyet's head is made, in the likely event that we're not 20 points clear at the top by Christmas, with over 100 goals scored already and Barcelona knocking on our doors with desperate bids to prize our footballing super-Gods from the ostentatious luxury of Withdean to the prosaic functionality of the Nou Camp in the January transfer window. Some people would do well to remember that it's not a bloody computer game.

What a start

Well, you can forget all that negative stuff I may have posted this morning, or over the last few days, or ever, in fact. A magnificent away victory at Swindon to get our season under way, with new boy Matt Sparrow bagging a brace. One of the great joys of football support (and one of its curses, as I've readily acknowledged in previous posts) is its gift of making up for all the rubbish and disappointment you have to go through on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, season-to-season basis with tremendous results which leave you bouncing.

Well done, lads, well bloody done. This without new skipper Greer, and main frontman Murray, both suspended. Regrettably, work prevented me attending, but I've read that we did it playing football too, as pledged by Gus.

A great start to the season. I will of course look back on this post a few months from now and laugh at my naivete, my wide-eyed enthusiasm for a single result, but just at the moment, even in that full knowledge, I simply don't care.

Baz in boots

My first game of the new season yesterday, a friendly with Aberdeen and a day spent in the company of Aberdonian mates down for the day. Well, what a pleasant surprise - we outplayed them from the start, kept the ball on the floor as promised by Gus, and generally looked encouraging. Another screamer from Bennett, he doesn't score tap-ins, as they say, and a good time had by all. Apart from over 500 Aberdeen fans I suspect, a superb turn-out, they deserved better. I don't know if their side are any indication of an utter paucity of quality in the SPL, or if they simply didn't take it seriously, or what the problem with them was, but it could have been a cricket score.

We missed an absolute hatful of chances, which should worry me I suspect, but the truth is, if we finish 12th this season but play football like that all year, I'll be happy. We won't, of course, be allowed to play football like that all year. League One teams will close you down in three tenths of a second and kick anybody trying any fancy stuff up in the air at the first opportunity. But it'll be nice watching a team try to play football of a purity and fluidity which is often sadly lacking in England.

I am a bit worried for the oddly-prosaically named Argentinian new signing, 'Baz', who came on as a sub, sporting bright yellow boots, and proceeded to twice connect with bicycle-kick volleys which would no doubt have screamed into the net, setting it aflame, had they not both been blocked immediately. The germane point here is that he connected with them in the first place. If he thinks there's any place in League One for that kind of outrageous exhibition of technical abilities he'll be disavowed of such delusions pretty quickly by some of the more, er, 'agricultural' players in the division.

It's nice to feel so encouraged going into what will, praise be, be the last season at Withdean. As is always the case, and as I said I'd be guilty of falling victim to in an earlier post, the depression and rancour of the English World Cup failure is dissipating rapidly as the optimism and enthusiasm for the new campaign takes over.

Bring it on!