PREVIEW // CHARLTON // AWAY
A trip to The Valley in the week before Christmas to play our friends at Charlton in the League Cup… what’s not to like (what could possibly go wrong)? Charlton away matchday preview, with a contribution (many thanks) from Charlton ‘zine My Only Desire.
There’s a long-lasting and meaningful relationship between Charlton Athletic and BHAFC - a common enemy can only help but foster the ties - and on our previous visit to The Valley some of us stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Charlton’s supporters, disenchanted with the grim ownership of Roland Duchâtelet and trying to do something about it. Direct action, meaningful protest - we’re here for you, comrades, and always will be.
This latest Charlton V Brighton fixture will also play out against a backdrop of protest, dissent and concern, but it would seem that (I hope) Charlton’s current worries are less existential, and more do to with mismanagement, misplaced optimism, and why you should always be suspicious of someone who isn’t a fan of your football club purchasing your beloved football club.
In Charlton’s case, the utterly ridiculous Thomas Sandgaard. Rockstar. Inventor. Entrepreneur. Prick. Or so goes the opening line of his risible twitter bio.
Thomas Sandgaard is the Danish-American Founder and CEO of private investment group Sandgaard Capital, and the man who decided to purchase Charlton Athletic in 2020 (but minus the stadium - the club’s only real asset - that’s one heck of an entrepreneurial deal), seemingly, just for the bantz.
‘a friend asked, have you thought about owning an English fodbold club? And I thought, ya, tak, that could be one of the most positive things that I could ever be a part of’
It gets worse. Because Thomas Sandgaard is also the founder, co-producer, and self-anointed guitar hero in his very own rock band.
Sometimes life imitates art, and if the people behind the US version of The Office decided to make a version of Life on The Road, the spin-off mockumentary film about Foregone Conclusion, David Brent’s self funded indie-pop monstrosity, then Thomas and his band Sandgaard would be that film.
For Brent’s misguided new romantic indie-stodge sensibilities - Kodaline, Snow Patrol, Passenger - see 90s frat boy stadium-rock - Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Aerosmith - and as a parody of the genre, Sandgaard are near faultless.
From the clumsy soft-metal iconography, the pseudo-profound lyrics ‘magnetic energy… sparks my insanity… pulling me into another… all love-hate, there’s no other’ to the band’s setup: drums, bass, vocals, band CEO and paymaster Thomas Sandgaard on guitar, plus an extra professional musician to actually play the guitar parts.
I look at people like Thomas Sandgaard, MBA Business Studies types, and I see people who have mistaken their ability to read a balance sheet and accrue massive personal wealth for possessing creativity, intelligence and charisma.
The tech bros in their Birkenstocks and gilets, who believe an unconventional wardrobe - their words not mine - adds colour and personality to a humdrum life of algorithms, programming, and cold shit coffee.
I guess none of that would matter too much if he was capable or willing to run his football club competently.
Here’s what Dave Thomson from our friends at Charlton ‘zine My Only Desire have to say about the man, and the current situation at Charlton:
Our biggest problem right now is Thomas Sandgaard’s ambitionless change of strategy. After two years of trumpeting promotion, he told us at the start of year three that his strategic focus had changed and the priority was now ‘financial break-even’.
This was a big deal. Gone was the ‘football is easy’ gloat or the ambition of ‘Premier League in five years’. Even ‘blowing League One apart’ was forgotten.
So, his only other way out is revenue generation but that looks as forlorn as his cost-cutting options.
We have to hope and pray that ongoing takeover activity in the background can deliver and relieve us of Sandgaard and his lack of ambition.
The build up to this fixture featured an interjection from Peter Varney, Charlton’s Chief Executive from the good times, with a coded hint that an interested party was planning to attend the game, so please, dear fans, try and at least look interested.
He also disclosed, bravely, that he follows the doctrines of well-known philosopher and lifestyle guru Jim Davidson.
Is it unfair of me to think that a signed Jim Davidson portrait is just the sort of trophy our own mustard-wearing fun-zealot would love to display on his home office wall? I have him down as a Michael McIntyre man, but for gentlemen of a certain vintage, one can never be certain.
Whether this call-to-arms has made much difference to the apathy and insouciance that seems to have settled across Charlton’s fanbase, we’ll discover on the night.
But before then we have a decision to make. What with it being this strange work-leisure week, the pre-Christmas period where most people have been paid twice but the official Christmas work related celebrations have wrapped up for the season, i’m wondering what constitutes an acceptable, and sensible, pub meeting time on Wednesday?
4pm, 3pm, earlier? I’m thinking drinks around London Bridge and then a train across to Charlton before kick off. In pre-covid times I'd have headed straight to the once mighty but now shuttered Antigallican, the massive away pub right by Charlton station.
The Antigallican was a classic of its type, and a much-loved fixture on the away boozer circuit (by me anyway). No tables or chairs - cleared away to create extra space (handy with a massive away following) lots and lots of staff, and an extremely limited selection of drinks to speed up service: one draught lager, one draught bitter, and one draught cider.
Who wants 26 craft ales from 16 different micro-breweries when you can smash down £3.50 pints of John Smiths or Carling before a game? RIP the Antigallican, you’ll be missed.
It’s a mark of our current status that taking 6,000 away feels fairly routine. It’s also a mark of our status, and of our success, that we now have a World Cup winner in the squad. A World Cup winner who would have been awarded player-of-the-match in the World Cup final if it wasn’t for the highest paid player in the world scoring a hattrick, and the second highest paid player in the world scoring twice to win the thing.
One of these players was purchased for £160m, one of them recently signed a contract valued at £94m, and one of them was purchased for just £12m.
Both Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi are effectively employees of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, whereas Alexi Mac Allister receives his remuneration from Uncle Tony’s payroll. Something to cling on to, perhaps, for anybody feeling guilty about watching matches broadcast from Qatar’s grisly haunted graveyard stadiums.
But the lesson to be learnt from Alexi Mac Allister’s ascent is that Tony Bloom’s player recruitment and development programme is working like no other in English football right now. It’s a thing of beauty, and built to last - most certainly robust enough to withstand the loss of the grey man and his angry little troll friend.
A grandiose claim, no doubt, but one that’s backed up by the most recent evidence available to us: Alexis’ sensational performance in the World Cup final and the golden medal he’ll be bringing back to the Amex with him.
Tony’s top-ten strategy isn’t to finish in the top ten every season for the sake of doing so, it’s to create a launchpad for something more exciting: trophies, glory, European football.
On Wednesday night we gather again, finally (it’s been so long hasn’t it), for the latest instalment of our first cup run post top-ten league finish. Last season’s ninth place finish wasn’t the end, it was the beginning.
And here we are having knocked out Arsenal, with a game against struggling League One opposition to reach the quarter-finals of the League Cup. Exciting times.
In our season 2022/23 opening preview piece (Man U away, fuck yeah), we heralded Deniz Undav as the season’s best signing. Not our best, but the best in the Premier League. He was prophesied as the coming of an XG saviour, the man to lead us on a righteous European journey. And in an act of dogmatic faith we’re standing squarely behind this.
Selling Neal Maupay has definitely helped our XG quest this season (1 goal in 10 games and counting for Everton, £10m in the bank, Bloom strikes again), but to reach our holy lands - Plovdiv, Brest, Tirana, and the post-industrial delights of Eindhoven - we’re going to need somebody to start banging in more goals, and a League Cup tie against League One opposition is just the occasion for Deniz Undav to prove that he’s The One.
We may not win a cup this season (we may not even get past Charlton) or next season, or even the season after that (and Deniz Undav could well end up being a waste of £6m).
But would you bet against The Lizard, the man who has just signed Messi’s long-term replacement in the Argentina team, Facundo Buonanotte, for just £6m, delivering us Ryanair flights and Thursday night football? Cup quarter finals, cup semi finals, and even, one day soon, victorious cup final afternoons.
As for Charlton, I hope their destiny doesn’t involve League Two football (nor do I hope it’s the next round of the League Cup, but that goes without saying), and they manage to find an owner who cares more about running Charlton Athletic than indulging their Chris Cornell fantasies.
I look forward to meeting them in the Premier League in the near future.
Parker
REVIEW // CHELSEA // HOME
Special afternoon, special football club. Post-match thoughts and feeling from three of our contributors.
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****** 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 ‘crapstall palarse, 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?
PREVIEW // CHELSEA // HOME
Thoughts and feelings ahead of this weekend’s matchday, from JBD, Rich / @common_ruin, Jem Stone / @JemStone, Tom Hylands / @tomhylands, Mess / @messageismyname and Parker.
Images: Andrew Forsyth / @AforsythTWP
Boehlocks to Chelsea
And so to Saturday and the biggest ‘revenge’ game that I can recall us having in a long time. My desire for revenge isn’t against Potter, or Cucu, or the coaching team, or anyone else who might be about to depart. It’s against Todd-fucking-Boehly.
Here is a man so deluged in riches, so absent of any understanding of tribal football communities, so shallow and profit-driven, that he is determined to create success by any means necessary. Yes, football has become a market place; yes, our Chairman allowed the Boehl-monster to talk to, multiply wages, and recruit the best coaching team we’ve ever had (at least for now); and yes - fuck him.
How must it feel to be a Chelsea fan at the moment? Well, apart from the shame of having to wear a flat cap and act aggressively for no reason. I imagine they feel pretty good - continuing to have entitlement, self-aggrandisement, and bile flowing from every single one of their pores.
How does it feel to be an Albion fan right now? It feels pretty good.
We have a new coach who displays the passion, hope, solidity and fervour that we all cherish. He’s tinkering with things to migrate from Potterball to De Zerbismo, and it’s working. I overheard so many ‘Brighton are a bloody good team’ type comments after the loss to citeh - you could have been forgiven for thinking we’d won.
Truth be told, we had. We’d out possessed, often outplayed, and out-thought one of the world’s best teams and, bar some decisions that left many scratching their heads, we put on a hell of a performance. A real team, working for each other and fighting for each other.
Do I feel confident about Saturday? Too soon to say. Am I happy about Saturday? Hell yeah.
Am I looking forward to singing about Roberto De Zerbi for as much of the game as we can? Fuck yeah.
This isn’t a time for booing and feelings of regret - this is about celebrating what we have, what we can look forward to, and what we can continue to build on, in all areas of achievement.
Oh, and fuck Potter anyway.
JBD (he/him/wanker)
Asset strips
Who could say no to a four or five-fold pay increase? Two million pounds a year would seem to be enough for anyone, but put yourself in their shoes!
You can see why they did it of course, on an individual level. As we’ve been told, it’s all so achingly rational.
What this type of thinking (in)tends to elide is any wider question about what has actually happened here - the structure of the league, the financial inequality that puts so much power in the hands of those at the top, the laughable lack of competition that’s all taken for granted - as natural and irresistible as gravity.
If the strip mining of a club’s entire footballing structure as a result of three consecutive months of good results, an almost parodic display of everything wrong with the game, is just a fact of life, an object lesson in Premier League realism, then what hope is there?
The hope, I suppose, that Bloom’s algorithm can work its magic, we can put things together again and still, somehow, beat the odds, outsmart everybody, and continue to climb the pyramid. You wouldn’t rule it out.
And of course, there is always a possibility, even with all the weight of money reflected on the pitch, that eleven players can beat eleven others in a game of football.
That fleetingly, for one afternoon, for the fate of three points, there could be a sense of justice in the world. Or at least a chance to fuck the bastards off.
Up the Albion.
Rich / @common_ruin
How did it get to this?
It’s perhaps a bit rich for me to ask some fans to lower the temperature. Yes. I know he left us after 6 games. Yes. I know he took Bruno. AND Ben Roberts. AND Bjorn, Benny and the other ones.
Yes. I know he’s had a pay rise to pay for the beard trim. And yes, I know he’s probably mentioned that Paul Winstanley has a rather useful case file on South American wunderkind at some point over the last six weeks to big Todd. How DARE HE! What a f***ing rotter.
But then, I thoroughly enjoyed partaking in the abuse of panto villain Alex Pritchard for taking the wrong turn on the M25 (and little good it did him). It took a while for #ffsMurray to earn his chops with me, and some other bitter old men for Albion Part Two because he didn’t clap the fans... ONCE.
So, accuse me of hypocrisy all you like. I deserve it.
However, Potter won’t be hearing any displeasure from me, and I won't be buying an inflatable snake.
I’ll sit on my hands and keep schtum in the East Stand Upper - like most matches up there with the other legacy fans.
I've some sympathy with the anger at how it all played out, the speed of the departure did leave a bitter taste and the five-game winless run hasn't helped, but some of the accusations about Chelsea and Hove Albion are well, a touch ridiculous.
Since when did it come to this? The grievances, the gnashing and wailing, the grumbles that it’s just not fair for #teamslikebrighton to attract a bit of interest and millions of pounds of compensation for some of our staff, squad or set up.
The whining, the lack of class… can’t we have a little bit more respect for ourselves?
Half a lifetime ago, in January 1973 I stood on a milk crate on the Goldstone West Stand terraces as Chelsea came to town. My first ever match. We have history.
That Division 3 version of the Albion were poor and had no answer to Peter Osgood in the third round of the FA Cup, losing 2-0. Instead, the only resistance that day was what commentator Jimmy Hill called ‘ridiculous’, as at one point late in the game, Brighton players were ‘going through the motions of fighting, nobody is really throwing a punch and it just looks so bad’.
Yet fifty years on some of us are still insistent on going through the motions, off the pitch at least. And putting up some token resistance.
Forgetting that last Saturday we went toe-to-toe with the world's most monied club (and VAR). Forgetting that our team has outplayed all of the top six in the last twelve months and tore Liverpool apart just three weeks ago.
Forgetting that RDZ will have a plan to out-think Potter, thanks very much. On the pitch is where we’ll get payback. This weekend’s game is as good a game as ever to reset the reign of Roberto, but not with petty theatrics we’ve long since outgrown.
So, looking ahead to the game tomorrow, can everyone just tone it down a bit please?
Mind you... that bloody Marc Cucurella, the turncoat, the double dealer, the Judas, the betrayer of wigs, the Estrella drinker. Watch out ESU friends, I’m clearing my throat…
Jem Stone / @JemStone
Welcome to the era of De Zerbismo
Chelsea at home. Who knew at the start of the season that this would be one of the most eagerly awaited fixtures. And not because of the football!
We’re five games into Albion’s De Zerbismo era and despite the points haul there’s a lot to be positive about. We had the blue side of Manchester under the cosh for much of the match last week, with them needing a world-class goal from De Bruyne to kill off the game.
For me, this was the game that De Zerbi started showing his tactical prowess as he made several tweaks that swung the game in our favour.
This is why I am optimistic going into this weekend’s game, even if their manager knows all of our squad intimately.
I’m intrigued as to how Chelsea will play us. I’m intrigued to see the systems both teams line up with. I’m intrigued what the atmosphere will be like. Basically, I’m just intrigued by the game.
What do I want to see though? A clinical edge and a Welbeck hat-trick. Perhaps more realistically, we need to go at them from the first whistle, just like we did to Liverpool at Anfield.
The players need to go out and make a statement (and not just in the hope of getting a call from SW6 in January).
If we can be aggressive, win the second ball and be quicker in attack, I don’t see any reason why we cannot take all three points. There will be space behind their defence and we have players that can score when they don’t have ten players lined up between them and the goal.
There’s a massive elephant in the room, and one that I’m trying to avoid mentioning. We can’t let all the pre-match talk, or the inevitable media shitstorm over the mixed reaction to ‘the return’ impact us. We need to get behind the boys in blue and white, make as much noise about our players and De Zerbi as we possibly can.
We need to make Falmer hostile. And show them that they can’t systematically dismantle our club just because they have loads of money. We’re more than that. We are Brighton & Hove Albion.
(Phew, I got through that without mentioning the names of any Chelsea employees).
Tom Hylands / @tomhylands
Can you really blame them?
Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I don’t resent Potter going to Chelsea. I don’t resent Ben Roberts going. Even, dare I say it, ‘once a Seagull’ Bruno.
Supporting our club means more than a job to us, it’s a passion, it’s filled with unexplainable emotions.
Someone I know was the victim of a terrible crime and I got to talking to the detective responsible for the case. He was excellent at his job and made sure the person responsible was prosecuted. I had the utmost respect for him. And then I found out he was a P****e fan.
We discussed our respective support of our clubs and we instantly took a bit of dislike to each other. My opinion of him changed irrationally. I was just disappointed in him. How could someone I knew was a good person support them?
But football is a job. A career that can be brutal and short lived. Littered with stories of bankruptcies and poor support for players particularly when they leave the game.
I don’t blame any of them for going, after all, if it were your job and you were offered a chance to maybe double your wages, to do the same thing, what would you do?
It’s just it’s not a job to us, it’s the total opposite. It’s something we pay money for, week in and week out, something we invest everything in. We care more about The Albion than all those who have headed to West London. Do you think they care as much about us now? Of course not. They have a new group of fans to care about. That’s their job.
That said, beating Chelsea, who have taken so much of our talent, (and are eyeing up even more) would be fucking brilliant. I mean really fucking brilliant.
Potter’s first defeat in his new job by our hands is more than possible. It would be just like us in fact. We’ve never beaten Chelsea in the league, and it’s not far off 100 years since we beat them in the FA Cup.
Don’t forget Graham didn’t exactly win many at The Amex. Just five home wins last season. Almost six months with just a single home win.
As always, it’s the hope that kills you.
Mess / @messageismyname
Dear Graham
We are the club of incremental progress, Tony’s Maschinen-Fußballverein, but right now, in this moment in time, it feels like we’ve been pushed off a cliff.
Potter and chums have fucked us. Chelsea have fucked us. And the neoliberal economic models that govern the Premier League… these too have fucked us.
Tony’s model has been engineered to beat the system, but the system has bitten back, and hard.
But I cannot accept - will not accept - that this is anything but a glitch.
The emotional impact of football can cloud objective thought, but if there’s one thing we can, and should, believe in, it’s Tony Bloom.
The machine is too strong and the project, Tony Bloom’s Brighton & Hove Albion, is too righteous to fail.
Fuck Graham Potter, fuck Chelsea, fuck the Premier League.
Our faith was rewarded before, and will be so again.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
Parker
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SPURS // HOME // PREVIEW
Calcio Europeo vs Calcio Italiano
Benvenuto Roberto, forza il Albion. A new man in the dugout - with his very own giant flag - and for many of us this weekend, a change to our usual matchday travel arrangements. Although, this could be viewed as an opportunity to mix things up a little.
Different pubs, in a different part of town. A chance to ride the rail-replacement football-special bus service. It’ll be a little like Reading away, but without the roundabouts and industrial parks.
From the Old Steine - the historical heart of the city - along and past The Level - where townsfolk gathered to celebrate and honour each other in years gone by - down the Lewes Road under shadows of a hulking student metropolis, and onwards until we reach the outer edges of the city and our place of worship.
‘By Falmer, city-overspill and edge-land roll up to meet one-another in the wild grass and hedges, crop fields and University buildings. On the asphalt is roadside litter (empty cans, faded plastics, crisp packets, drive-thru detritus). Match day specials, designated drivers, cycle-to-work scheme bikes, taxis, and pathways dump us all here from weather-beaten homes’ Between Downs and Sea we Flourish / Dogma Issue 7 / Lee Christien / @LeeChristien
And as a sign of our devotion we have been given a new flag to raise aloft. Designed, no less, by Dogma contributor Alfie Bacon, and instigated, I believe, by a member of the Fan Advisory Board (FAB) - something that has generated some consternation.
It seems fair - healthy even - to question the motives behind the FAB initiative. Not the motives of the FAB members, who I’m sure applied to join up in good faith, but the club’s.
But a massive Roberto De Zerbi themed flag to be unravelled and displayed across the North Stand seems like an uncomplicatedly positive thing, no? Sometimes, so people keep telling me, if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.
Credit is due to the FAB for recognising that the occasion warrants more than just a polite round of applause and a pat on the back from Richie Reynolds, and then actually doing something about it. It’s a big moment, no question, benvenuto Roberto, forza il Albion.
Roberto De Zerbi has arrived with a stellar reputation, plus, seemingly, an entire digital ecosystem of evangelical fanboys, tactics geeks, soccer hipsters, and football modernists. Apostles, not of a club but of The Church of De Zerbismo. 
Back in 2014, when Chris Hughton was announced as our new manager, the only non-Albion voices in the conversation were bitter Norwich City fans telling us that he was rubbish. I’m taking it as a sign of our progress that eight years on, those angry East Anglian voices have been replaced by people referencing Champions League matches and tactical masterclasses in Serie A.
‘De Zerbi’s football has arrived in the nick of time. Just as it seemed all was lost his style provokes us to consider the possibility of something different. It begs the questions, what do you think you know about football? On what basis are you making evaluations about a team’s performance? What authority deems one action too risky and another one safe? Jamie Hamilton / @stirling_j
Within that De Zerbi fanboy ecosystem and commentariat, or perhaps floating slightly above it, there was something that really jumped out. James Horncastle’s contribution to The Athletic Football Tactics Podcast. Roberto De Zerbi, he explained, is considered within Italy as a practitioner of Calcio Europeo, not Calcio Italiano. Modern European football, not traditional Italian.
For Calcio Europeo, I presume he was referring to the rise of the hipster manager. Coaches who like their teams to retain possession and attack in numbers, whilst feeling confident enough to swap the suit for a pair of expensive white-soled black trainers and a lux woollen sweater.
And for traditional Calcio Italiano - despite the excellence of Italy’s Euro Championships winning team (but this doesn’t fit the cliché so let’s ignore that for a second) - we’re talking catenaccio, defensive rigour, try and kill the game, some shithousing, a stodgy low block and just enough threat on the counter to keep things spicy.
James Horncastle’s remarks were intended to contextualise De Zerbi’s approach to life and the career decisions he has taken so far. Happy to stay with Sassuolo when larger clubs showed some interest (take note, Graham) so he could continue putting his ideas into practice in a less pressurised environment, and willing to make a countercultural move away from Serie A - at a relatively young age - to manage Shakhtar Donetsk, and now, in the Premier League.
But it’s also, inadvertently, a likely tactical backdrop to this weekend’s fixture. Roberto De Zerbi vs Antonio Conte, Calcio Europeo vs Calcio Italiano.
Under Graham Potter, we grew to learn how this type of fixture might play out. Some sort of XG nightmare - thirteen shots to three, and a 2 -1 home defeat - or, occasionally, an excellent home victory that was built around Graham’s version of heavy football.
Not the heavy metal football as played by Jurgen Klopp’s Dortmund or the various Central European Red Bull teams, but a sort of respectful post-rock version. Earnest and intellectual, subtle, less showy, but with the same tonal intensity.
Win the ball back, regain shape, move the ball, create spaces, hope a decent opportunity appears at some point for Neal to blaze over, rinse and repeat. It should grind the fuckers down eventually, and some weeks it did.
But from what we have seen so far, and what can be gleaned from Church of De Zerbismo members, Roberto will ask his Albion team to overwhelm the opposition. Go in large numbers and rout.
Attrition and patience is for dullards in M&S jackets struggling with imposter syndrome.
What this bold approach will demand of us, his new congregation, is unquestionable belief and commitment. For He will lead, and we must follow.
‘As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is flawless. He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him’ Psalm 18.30
But what he may well hear from the gathered flock, when things inevitably go a little awry, is the dissenting voice of the heretic. Get rid, put it in the mixer, smash it into row zeta.
Of course theological divide - devout zealots Vs pragmatists and non-believers - is familiar territory for us. It defined the Potter era. Albeit the discourse focussed on the importance of performance versus the emotional impact of defeat.
With De Zerbi, you suspect, the opposing factions will be those who get upset watching us pass the ball straight to Harry Kane to roll into an empty net, versus those who savour dogmatic refusal to play the occasional long ball for Welbeck to chase (plus a third much smaller grouping: those of us who will find it so stressful that we’ll spend the entire match standing on the concourse feeling anxious).
The debate around Potter’s qualities and the value of his approach to football was settled, eventually, thanks to his 14 game hot streak (leaving behind nothing but his oily skid marks to clear up, the dirty fucker).
That Tony Bloom doubled down on his beliefs - in modern possession-based football, in Calcio Europeo - and hired not a continuity candidate but someone who promises to evolve and refresh, whilst massively upping the ante, is testament to his faith. In his project, his sacred metrics, and his dogma that this approach, with Him now in charge, gives us the best possible chance of success.
We have but one choice: go to our church, stand in line, take our bread and wine - our pints and our pies - and say our prayers.
A-fucking-men to that.
Words: Parker // Photography: Andrew Forsyth / @AforsythTWP
Social media references and credits:
Alfie Bacon / @AlfieBacon_ // De Zerbian Church / @DeZerbianChurch // Lee Christien / @LeeChristien // Jamie Hamilton / @stirling_j