Time is a flat circle. Everything Brighton and Crystal Palace have ever done or will do, they will do over and over and over again. They are reborn, but into the same life that they’ve always been born into.
These two sides are as dependable as the tides. Brighton and Hove Albion make a brilliant start and become the neutrals’ favourites thanks to some unexpected wins over the big-name clubs, before being reminded of their long-standing club policy that defending is for the weak and cowardly and promptly sliding down to something like ninth in the table.
Crystal Palace meanwhile live through the first half of every season in a state of near-crisis, looking sure to end their long Premier League spell and return to the Championship, only to rally sometime around mid-season – often helped by having frustrated their biggest rivals – and end up finishing somewhere between 10th and 14th with 40-something points.
As Trevoh Chalobah’s opener hit the back of the net at the end of a shoddily-defended corner, the lights at the Amex dimmed. The players and fans froze in time and faded out of reality for a few moments, replaced by a giant in a bowtie who repeatedly intoned: “It is happening again.”
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Play then resumed, with Ismaila Sarr confirming the prediction seven minutes later by heading home Tyrick Mitchell’s excellent cross from the left. Lewis Dunk was left trailing in Sarr’s slipstream, nowhere near making a challenge on either the man or the ball.
Any doubt about the result after a solid half of Brighton pressure was killed off eight minutes from time, with Sarr again catching Dunk in sluggish mode to race onto a looping header and get one on one with Bart Verbruggen to slot home. A comical Marc Guehi own goal a few minutes later did nothing to lift Brighton spirits.
Just imagine what Brighton could achieve if they could actually defend. Their array of midfield and attacking talents can be dazzling at times – not here until after the break, it must be said, but at times – but there are few sides of their standard and standing who can be so routinely undone on the basics.
Palace held their two-goal lead at the break through mere unexceptional competence; any and all damnation implied by that faint praise should be discarded, because that’s the best gameplan for getting a result against Brighton.
Nor is that criticism of Brighton said with particular vehemence. They have succeeded in establishing themselves as a Premier League side and consistently spending at least some of each campaign knocking around the European places because they are willing to take those kinds of attacking risks and have the talent to make it work on their day.
But that state of up-and-then-down, down-and-then-up stasis both clubs find themselves in is a relative rarity these days. You’d be a fool ever to write off Palace as doomed after a poor start to a campaign, but anyone talking up their prospects after their superlative end to last season following Oliver Glasner’s arrival was made to look equally thick.
And you’d be mad to think Brighton were not in with a shout of achieving European qualification, but you just know that no matter how strongly they start, no matter which of the big boys they beat, their increasingly frustrating inconsistency will always keep the top four tantalisingly beyond them.
At a certain point, fans will always grow tired of seeing the same things year after year. You can’t help but wonder whether, how or when either club will be able to free themselves from their equally curious repeating patterns – but as far as this season goes, Palace fans have been given greater reason to believe their only likely trajectory from where they are now is upward.
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