FA Cup Quarter Final Week

We'll probably lose 7-0 but the day will be 👍

My main hope is that we do better than we did against Chelsea a few years ago.  That was pretty painful to watch - particularly sitting in the Chelsea stands!

I think the reason this cup run has been so successful is that we are a team that seems to play well on the counter.  This is why our home form, particularly against lesser teams, has been so poor.  Apart from the occasional defensive lapse, we seem to be able to contain pressure well and then get down the other end and cause a threat.

If we can go 20 minutes without conceding, the players will grow in belief and then who knows.  However, anything better than a 4 goal losing margin would be success!

coach to london on Sat then another to Brighton hoping for beers Sat night in The Lanes.

Quoted from LondonMariner43

My main hope is that we do better than we did against Chelsea a few years ago.  That was pretty painful to watch - particularly sitting in the Chelsea stands!

I think the reason this cup run has been so successful is that we are a team that seems to play well on the counter.  This is why our home form, particularly against lesser teams, has been so poor.  Apart from the occasional defensive lapse, we seem to be able to contain pressure well and then get down the other end and cause a threat.

If we can go 20 minutes without conceding, the players will grow in belief and then who knows.  However, anything better than a 4 goal losing margin would be success!

I’m quietly confident that we’ll do better than that, not that 7-1 is a particularly high benchmark. Jolley got that game tactically badly wrong, and we’re punished by an extremely good team for our troubles. Man for man against 11 players who think and move so much faster than you do was a disaster waiting to happen.

Hurst has proven how good he is at setting teams up for big, one off games. In the last year alone we’ve beaten Notts County, Wrexham, Solihull, Plymouth, Cambridge, Burton, Luton and Southampton in such encounters, all of whom were placed above us in the football pyramid to varying degrees of extremity. You can’t fluke that.

Of course, Brighton are on another level to even those at the sharper end of that list; they’ve routinely made top Premier League teams (including last season’s Champions League finalists) look very silly.

They have however already lost this season to a bang average Charlton team and, whilst this is clutching at straws a bit, I wonder whether playing a “lesser” team upsets their rhythm a bit.

I’ve watched a bit of Brighton since De Zerbi took over, and they play a very unique, interesting game. Almost like a hybrid of Man City and Liverpool’s game - tiki taka in their own last third, invite and cleverly play through the press then go full ‘heavy metal’ on the break. It’s a risky approach, but they’re incredibly good at it.

We’re not going to press as keenly or as quickly as their top-flight opponents; it’s going to be a different kind of game for them altogether, so it will be interesting to see how their players adapt to that.

Who knows? Brighton should prevail comfortably, but the narrative of a Town victory I couldn’t find in my minds eye when the draw was made has started to write itself, albeit only in my imagination. An early Brighton mistake leads to a red card, and it’s game on.

I’ll continue to dream until it’s a practical impossibility. Football is the funniest of funny games.

Quoted from Poojah

In the last year alone we’ve beaten Notts County, Wrexham, Solihull, Plymouth, Cambridge, Burton, Luton and Southampton in such encounters, all of whom were placed above us in the football pyramid to varying degrees of extremity. You can’t fluke that.  

And Crewe!

Quoted from wuffing

  

                                                                                                                                     PS: don't forget the other 621 Mariners!
  
                                                                                                                                        

PPS Don't forget the other Mariners who had to buy Hospitality to get to see the Brighton game too!!!!!
UTM

To even compete we'll need to be at our best, them have am off day and us get some luck. Agree with those saying we have to get through the first twenty minutes like we did at Luton and Southampton but it's easy to forget they both had early goals disallowed for offside. They were both off but neither of them needed to be.

Quoted from Son of Cod

And Crewe!

And Manchester City, who to be fair pushed us all the way to penalties.

The longer we stay in the game the better chance we’ve got. I’m just going in the hope we can get a goal and that we fans can make some big noise to win some neutrals over. If and it is a huge if we can somehow get the win it’s a bonus.

We have to be 20% better than normal and they 20% worse. That’s massively unlikely, but imagine, just imagine. We’ve had bigger individual upsets I think, Everton away was the equivalent of beating the current Man City side. However not club in the land has ever done what we have the chance to do on Sunday and it would be peak Town to go and do it. By the same token I went to Hartlepool and Hillsborough and Anfield so know what it’s like to get hammered. That would also be a very Town thing to do.
All that said I’m more excited than Tigger after experimenting with speed so the weekend can’t come soon enough.