Football Daily | Brighton have come a long way, baby. Next stop: Europe

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Considering it happened less than 30 years ago, there is every chance that plenty of the fans who are in attendance at the Amex Stadium on Thursday night to see Brighton host AEK Athens in their first ever European match will have taken part in the York City “riot” of 1996. More genteel pitch invasion than violent disturbance, it made global headlines when supporters attending what they presumed to be the final game at their club’s then home, the Goldstone Ground, convened on the pitch in protest at having their home for the previous 95 years sold out from under them by unscrupulous club owners. “Rampaging fans turned Brighton into a war zone yesterday in sickening scenes that shamed soccer,” harrumphed the next day’s News of the World, failing utterly to capture the peaceful mood of an occasion in which the only knack inflicted were on both sets of goalposts.

Re: Harry Kane (yesterday’s Football Daily). Surely Harry is more like a cane toad than a hungry caterpillar? Caterpillars may have many legs but they don’t move very quickly nor do they gobble up much. Whereas his namesake toad is voracious and can get round most prey’s defences. A pest, no offence Harry” – Jim Arrowsmith.

Re: Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s hindsight over Cristiano Ronaldo (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). Hiring a club legend company shill to manage one of the best-supported football clubs in the world ‘felt right but was wrong’” – Harriet Osborn.

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