Albion showed their typical (of late) defensive
qualities in the fantastic surroundings of the Millennium Stadium this
afternoon. With nearly 30,000 fans decked out in blue and white and cheering
them on (some very old shirts appeared to have been found at the bottom of a
few dusty bedroom drawers) Brighton restricted Bristol City to a sterile
performance with virtually no chances or shots to mention.
With the defence brilliantly marshalled as
usual by man of the match Danny Cullip, it was a match of few chances but we
never looked in any trouble and had the better of the game overall. City
occasionally passed the ball around well but it was all midfield play with no
cutting edge to the forwards.
The nearest anyone came to scoring in the first
half was when Leon Knight hit the bar with a free kick from the edge of the
box and the optimism was high at half time.
The second half was similar to the first but
City had probably their best spell in the first 15 minutes. However, after
that it was back to normal with Brighton in little or no trouble and the hope
that a clear cut chance would fall to someone. That came in the end when
Iwelumo was fouled in the box when his ankles were kicked from behind and up
stepped Leon to calmly tuck the penalty away into the bottom corner.
It was pandemonium at the north end of the
Stadium for the last five minutes and even more so during the three minutes of
injury time but we held out easily, just as we had done for the whole game,
and Danny Cullip stepped up to collect the trophy.
Now we can look forward to trips to Leeds, West
Ham, Wolves, Leicester and all of the rest of Division One next season,
although unfortunately not Palace who had been sitting in the self same seats
as ourselves the day before!
