More like Holby City than Dream Team – but omens could be good for Brighton and Hove Albion to get something at Nottingham Forest

The Albion dressing room seems to resemble a scene from Holby City rather than Dream Team, with at least 11 first team squad players unavailable for Saturday’s trip to Nottingham Forest.

It obviously throws up the ongoing and almost obligatory question: “Is the Albion squad big enough?”

Unfortunately no-one could have ever foreseen this number of injuries barely a third of the way through the season, and for those smart Alecs who immediately point fingers at both the fitness regime at the club and the medical team, these are just a horrendous set of circumstances.

But we are Brighton, the ‘Lazarus’ club, the team that effectively came back from the dead, so whatever gets thrown at us, we take to on the chin.

When you’ve had to endure some of the dross in a blue and white shirt we have seen across the decades, a team lining up at the City Ground come 3pm on Saturday containing the likes of Verbruggen, Veltman, Webster, Gross, Adingra, Gilmour, Lallana, Fati and the aforementioned Pedro is a veritable feast.

Such is the unpredictability of the Albion you could quite easily see them going to Forest on Saturday and getting a result. Some 44 years ago in November 1979, the Albion, after some poor form at the start of their first ever top flight campaign, almost looked like relegation certainties as early as November.

They arrived to face Brian Clough’s Forest, back then the reigning European champions, who were enjoying a 51-game league unbeaten streak at home, going back nearly three years. Throw the Match of the Day camaras into the mix, and the stage was set for one of the most memorable Albion victories on the road.

The recently departed and much-missed Gerry Ryan scored the only goal of the game, Cloughie was extremely dismissive in his post match appraisal, and the journalistic legend that was John Vinicombe later wrote that this was the game that effectively turned the Albion’s season around.

They later beat Forest again at the Goldstone, recording an unsurpassed ‘double’ against the European champions. Note to younger readers, yes it’s like beating Man City at the Etihad and the Amex.

Times, and football in general have moved on, the Albion now dine at football’s top table, with European football on the menu, but blighted by injuries its fair to say the league form has stuttered at times, draws at home to both Fulham and Sheff Utd being a case in point.

Maybe, with all the injury setbacks, and with a trip to Athens to look forward to next week, lightning will strike twice in the same place, with the apparently depleted Albion getting a result in the East Midlands to re ignite their EPL campaign?

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