Brighton's 125th Birthday Party Almost Never Happened

Brighton & Hove Albion turn 125 this season, and they are marking the occasion the way few would have predicted three decades ago: fifth in the Premier League, four games into a tenth consecutive top-flight campaign, and already underway in a second European campaign that began last month in Tromso. The anniversary fixture against Arsenal is a celebration. The club's own recent history is a reminder of how close there was nothing left to celebrate at all.

A club that nearly didn't reach 125

Brighton were formed in 1901 and spent almost two decades in the Southern League before being voted into the Football League. Promotion to the top flight arrived for the first time in 1979, after only seven seasons in Division Two. For years the club's best-known moment outside Sussex was a miss rather than a trophy: Gordon Smith's saved shot in the 1983 FA Cup final against Manchester United, immortalised by the BBC radio commentary "And Smith must score."

The real crisis came in 1995, when chairman Bill Archer sold the Goldstone Ground, Brighton's home since 1902, to cover escalating debts. Fans were not consulted and no replacement ground was arranged. The club's final Goldstone season was only confirmed after the last match of the 1995-96 campaign had to be abandoned when furious supporters invaded the pitch; both crossbars were snapped in the chaos. Brighton then spent two seasons playing 70 miles away at Gillingham before returning to the city in 1999 to play at Withdean Stadium, an athletics venue with a capacity of just 6,000. Along the way, in 1997, Brighton found themselves just 27 minutes from dropping out of the Football League altogether.

The fight that kept the club alive

That the club survived owes as much to supporters as to anyone in the boardroom. Fan Paul Samrah names August 2007, when objectors to the club's planned stadium at Falmer abandoned their opposition and planning permission finally came through, as his most memorable moment. "We'd won our battle," he said. Former Football Association executive David Davies, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who overturned a rejected planning application for the Falmer site, and former chairman Dick Knight are all credited with helping stabilise a club that Samrah describes as having been "rudderless" through the 1990s.

Bloom's investment turns survival into success

The Brighton of 2026 is built on the vision, and the money, of Tony Bloom. Born in the city and a lifelong fan whose grandfather Harry served as vice-chairman, Bloom made his fortune in finance and gambling before becoming chairman in 2009. He has overseen the rise from League One into the American Express Stadium, a recruitment model built on buying and selling players for significant profit, and an average attendance last season above 31,000. Sporting director Mike Cave summed up the contrast: "Anyone walking into Brighton today compared to even 15 years ago would not think it was the same football club." The current side has already beaten Manchester United at Old Trafford for the fifth time in six visits.

From Withdean to Amsterdam

Brighton's first European campaign began in November 2023 with a 2-0 win at Ajax in the Europa League. Before kick-off, Roberto de Zerbi told his players that although only 3,000 Brighton fans held tickets inside the Amsterdam Arena, more than twice that number had travelled to the city regardless. In fact, more than 7,000 Brighton fans made the trip - more than the entire 6,000 capacity of the Withdean Stadium, the athletics ground the club moved into in 1999 after returning from Gillingham. A senior club official who was in the away dressing room that evening called it "the royalty of European football." Brighton opened a second European campaign last month with a Conference League play-off away to Tromso.

Bloom addressed the anniversary directly in his notes for the Arsenal programme, describing the club as "part of the fabric of our city" since 1901 and crediting supporters for the club's survival through "the loss of the Goldstone" and "the long journeys to Gillingham." "This club is in my blood," he wrote. Whatever the result against Arsenal, that history is the point: a club that spent the mid-1990s fighting to exist at all is now the one other Premier League clubs study for how to do things properly. The next 125 years start from a considerably higher base than the last set did.

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Research: This article uses the archived evidence supplied for this story. Story inspiration: BBC Sport's original report.