This will be Huddersfield Towns first ever visit to the impressive AMEX stadium on the outskirts of Brighton. After many years Brighton at long last have a place they can call home and i for one am looking forward to watching a game at Brighton in a decent football ground having seen Town play them at the Goldstone(very run down by the time i visited) and the Withdean(the less said about the view from the away end the better)
So what can we expect this weekend from Brighton, well they are a very good football team who like to pass the ball about as those who witnessed the first half of our game at the John Smiths stadium this season will testify. Goals seem to come from all positions with our old pain Craig Makail-Smith leading the way with 11goals, Town will certainly have to work hard to keep the Seagulls at bay. Brighton are quite solid at home with 7 wins, 7 draws and just 3 defeats none of which have come in 2013.
Well if you were a betting man you'd be sticking this one down on the bookies coupon as a home banker. Combine BHA's home record with our recent away record and you can only see a home win by a comfortable margin. Having said all that Town have turned in 2 pretty solid defensive performances in the last 2 games although the opposition wasn't the greatest, Just which Town team will turn up though, will it be the 1 that battled Burnley for everything and managed a deserved 1-0 win or will it be the team that rolled over and had its belly tickled 6-1 at Notts Forest?
Head to Head
Brighton have the upper hand in this with 18wins to our 14 overall(home and away) at Home BHA have won 9 out of 20 games against us with Town just winning 4. The good news is we have never lost at the Amex(yet!)
How to get there
By Car-if you're travelling by car then first of all well done, it's a bloody long way. Secondly you'll be wanting a bit of Park and Ride info for when you arrive in Brighton because as far as I'm away parking is very, and I mean VERY limited at the ground and it's a whopping £13! So you need to find one of the following places
Mill Hill Rd- BN1 8ZF
Mithras House,Lewes Rd- BN2 4AT
Brighton Racecourse- BN2 9XZ
If you don't fancy driving all the way to Brighton then let the train take the strain a little bit, park up at Luton and get the train to Brighton for just £18rtn, the journey takes between 1hr 51mins and 1hr 59mins. If you're travelling in a group you can get a group saver for 3 or 4 people and this reduces the fare even more to £12ea when 3 travel or £9ea when 4 travel. The Car park at Luton should set you back about £5. ALWAYS check for any engineering works before travel
By Train- if you're coming in on the train then you actually only need a train ticket as far as Haywards Heath as your match ticket will cover the rest of the journey into Falmer. Please check though that your train stops at Haywards Heath if you do this because if it doesn't your ticket will be invalid.
When you arrive in Brighton you will need to catch a train to Falmer, looking at the timetable you have a choice of 6 trains per hour that will get you there. Be warned after 2pm these trains can get very busy and queuing outside of the station is a possibility so please don't leave it until the last minute.
After the game once again be prepared to queue for your train back, see notes on food and drink for further info about this.
Food and Drink
Plenty of boozers to pick from in Brighton itself and if you'not sure then ask one of the locals, I'm sure they will point you in the right direction.
Around the ground is a different story though, as usual another new ground built on the edge of Town with nothing near by. To compensate for this though the ground and 2 bars built into the club open at 13:00pm on a Saturday. You may struggle to get into the 2 bars being a away fan so the best option is probably to go straight into the ground where beer and food will be served up until 10minutes before kick off. The bar will then reopen 10mins before half time and remain open until 10mins after half time.
I've managed to find out the following
Harvey's Real Ale £3.90/pint..not sure if we may have a Yorkshire ale on instead though.
Fosters £3.90, Strongbow £4.00, Red/White/Rose Wine £4.20
Pie and a Pint deal £7.00
Steak and Ale Pie/Chicken and Ham/Veggie Pies £3.90
Hot Dogs and the usual burger fayre are available from £3.80 to £4.20
Tea/Coffee/Hot Chocolate and Bovril £2.00
Now about queuing for your train back into Brighton, if you are in no rush to get back the great news is that the bars in the ground re open at the full time whistle and remain open until 18:45pm. The advice I've seen elsewhere suggests that you're better off staying behind for a couple of pints and letting the queues die down a bit. I'm told that we can even nip round to the home end afterwards and we're welcome in the bar under the home stand to have a beer and a chat with the home fans.
Brighton v Huddersfield Town
posted on 4/3/13
As for us not being able to compete, that's true to an extent Mirf but you're massively wrong if you think Town fans should just accept the constant collapses. Concede a goal and suddenly it could very easily be 5 or 6. It should have been more than 4 again on Saturday, just like it could have been more than 6 at Leicester and Forest, more than 4 at Millwall, more than 3 at Posh, and god knows how Hull only managed to score 2.
The board have made some stupid decisions this season and have royally effed up. £1m for Sean Morrison and they say Reading are playing silly beggars - £1m for Sean Morrison would have been a bargain and we'd have been much better defensively with him in the team! Then there's the lack of re-investment of the Rhodes money in January in a striker who could actually score goals.
The board have made this problem and have then simply hoped it went away rather than trying to solve it. Bringing in a new manager and putting together a long-term strategy is great, but why is it only happening now? Was there not a long term strategy in place when we were in League One? No, we waited until we were in trouble and then decided to stop spending money and concentrate on the academy.
Like I say, all our problems start right at the very top of the football club. I respect Hoyle for what he's done and we wouldn't be where we are now without him. That doesn't mean I think the brainless idiots who have a go at him for other little things aren't brainless idiots, it just means that he and the board have made a massive balls up when it comes to the long term strategy in place at our club.
posted on 4/3/13
Welcome back Mirf
I'm fed up of you Moaning about me moaning
Look. the football is not good enough, plain and simple,
basic errors are nothing to do with 'budget', tactics or anything else, as pro footballers (at any level) They should be above that,
re-expectations & setting them too high (?) er.... I've already cleared that up Mirf ! I'm with them all the way, even being beaten by far superior sides, That's always going to happen, But.
They have to try their best, We will have to continue to disagree on that one
As for not being able to compete with the clubs you mentioned, Hogwash.
We did just that in the early part of the season, (and more recently under the guidance of Lillis)...
Maybe You, the regular fans are to blame for not making enough noise & getting behind them & giving them the support they crave ? In stead of all sitting there in near silence, clogging up the stair wells with flasks & potted dog sandwiches, Moaning & groaning.
posted on 4/3/13
keep saying it because its true..
dean hoyle spent far too much money getting out of league 1..
not our fault..
He is supposed to be a top notch buisiness man.. He is also a lifelong town fan and therefore one assumes he knows the game...
I admit that he must have been shocked about how much money you can "waste" running a football team but that is not an excuse now to cut the legs off the club at a vital time in its "progress"..
bouncing between the 1st div and the championship isnt much progress for upwards of 17 million quid is it???
A good deal of the money spent is in infrastructure, watfords ground hasnt changed as far back as i can remember apart from the seats going in.. Palace is still just about the same, le-ds are 8 points ahead of us and we know they havent even painted the ground for 10 years...
boro and forest and cardiff had debts similar to those of mexico and they have still invested in better players than us..and they have a great chance of reaching the "promised land"...
"COMPETING" in this division is not hoping that 3 teams do worse than us... No one expected us to be pushing for promotion(Even when we were in the top 2, I and others urged major caution and made comment on our defence, which continually, got away with it) and to some extent I wouldnt be "moaning" if we had lost a lot of the games by the odd goal.. The overriding feeling is that if we lose a goal the game is gone, never mind who we are playing... Derby over ran us after a decent start, forest mullered us after a very decent start and we did ok for nearly 70 minutes on saturday...the question about all those games is why did we just fall apart???
Forget the leicester game they hammered us from the start...
Competing isnt just about being above half way, its about teams knowing they are in for a hard game when the play us and its about us competing for the 90 minutes in each game, we simply dont do it...
Its no good Dean now applying "good business principles" to a situation of his own making after allowing the geordie clown to spend 5 years budget in less than 3.. Dean you allowed him to do it and if the excuse is we cant compete because "i dont pay the players enough money" then you are solely at fault and your building the club wont work because no one will be using the facilities you built and investors wont like the 1st division...
Paying far too much in silly transfers and stupid wages to no marks in the first division and then after scraping up not investing in the championship to a reasonable amount is tantamount to gross stupidity.. no arguments..
By the way, the wages bit... they still get paid a lot of money to kick a ball around for 90 minutes...anyone who cannot run around for 90 minutes a couple of times a week and calls themselves a professional, isnt....
anyone who gives up and loses concentration and effort isnt either..
If they didnt think they were being paid enough they should have told us to "f-ck off" when they were asked to look at their contracts.. end of... no excuses...
work harder for a new contract or to impress someone else so you can f-ck off at the end of the season..
posted on 4/3/13
Cas,
Derby are still one of the best suported clubs in the Championship and between 2007-2010 were the twelfth best supported club in England and had a bigger average than 9 Premiership teams. Last seasons average was 23160 which was the third highest in the league.
As for Palace, they will be paying out far more than Town in wages, because the likes of Philips, Zaha, Murray and others won't come cheap, plus they have already (Jan 2013) banked £15 million from Man Utd for Zaha, although he remains with them until the seasons end.
posted on 4/3/13
Derby spend next to nothing on wages and only use their great attendances to boost profits. Their fans are currently losing interest because they're settling for mid-table season after season instead of pushing on. Their wage budget won't be much bigger than ours.
Then I think you're judging Palace players too much on one season. Murray was only a League One striker when Palace signed him, I highly doubt he will have been paid that much. Phillips is coming to the end of his career and is used mostly as a sub, again he won't be on big wages. Zaha was a youth player at Palace and didn't sign a contract post 2011 so he won't be on a lot either, and certainly won't be since been loaned back by United. Again they won't be spending that much more than us.
posted on 4/3/13
Darn,
I've never defended players when they don't bust a gut for the full 90 mins and never would and I'm pretty sure Robins wont tolerate it either.
As for your comment of "Hogwash" regading my comment of Town not being able to compete with the clubs I mentioned, Town's situation is no different to what we currently see in the Premiership, with the bottom half of clubs not being able to compete with the Manchester's, Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea and Liverpool's of this world, simply because these clubs have far greater support and much bigger budgets.
As far as the chances of the Wigan's of this world ever winning the Premiership title, it's like asking you to win at Donnington Park with a BSA Bantam between your legs.
posted on 4/3/13
Darn says
Maybe You, the regular fans are to blame for not making enough noise & getting behind them & giving them the support they crave ? In stead of all sitting there in near silence, clogging up the stair wells with flasks & potted dog sandwiches, Moaning & groaning..
------------
Just brilliant Darn, you couldn't make it up.....oh hang on you just did
posted on 4/3/13
watford, palace , boro and hull havent broken any box office records for crowds..
boro got 15k for the leaders on saturday.. they also have debts that make ours look like a small personal overdraft..
forget all the background stuff mirf.. watch us fall apart time after time and ask yourself "is that really acceptable" for huddersfield town professional football club????
forget our league position , in theory its where dean and the club were aiming for on day 1..
in practice we look like the team that can lose to anyone and lose badly.. at this stage of the season thats a bad place to be..
looking to beat charlton, posh and barnsley at home and getting something at bristol is a very, very bad plan..
posted on 4/3/13
Nice one Mirf,
I did used to win the 'Chip shop GP' though .
look, If your OK with the football on display, Fine, I think it should be better,
Wakey, maybe I should have added a ""...
I know, Just a laugh mate, 'Cause the JSS 'Rocks' doesn't it
posted on 4/3/13
Anyway, The pair of you !
stop Bug Argh ing about on here,
The Boro match thread is up