Brighton 2-3 AEK Athens recap: A Lewis Dunk sized hole, Uefa's empty seats shame and believe in a De Zerbi bounce-back

When you’ve lost at home to Darlington in front of less than 3,000 fans, and languish eight points – with a further five point penalty pending – adrift at the bottom of the old Division four, a narrow home defeat in European competition in front of 30,000 fans is almost a walk in Hove Park.

So, despite the unbelievable hype, Albion’s European debut didn’t quite work out how we all wanted. Did the footballing Gods conspire against the Seagulls?

Losing Lewis Dunk was massive, Joni Mitchell famously sung: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”, and the absence of Albion’s talismanic captain was apparent especially in the wake of AEK’s first two goals from set pieces.

Unfortunately, not for the first time and certainly not the last, the stats do lie. 75/25 in the Albion’s favour on possession, 15 shots for the home team, seven on target, back in the dark days around the time of the Darlington game, it took us almost a month to threaten the opponents goal on those levels.

Cliche alert, but on another night it could have been a far, far different story. But it wasn’t, and all credit must go to the visitors from Greece, they did a job, and whilst the debate amongst the Albion faithful will rage on until at least the kick off against Bournemouth on Sunday, they travel back home with all three points, deserved or not.

But it’s not the end, even in the embers of a hugely disappointing loss, it could be the beginning of yet another legendary Albion comeback, shades of 80/81 and 96/97. History tells us that the Albion can sometimes be at their most effective and lethal when their backs are against the wall.

It’s one game of six, there are still 15 points up for grabs in this Europa League, and given RDZ’s almost unique application of ‘bouncebackability’ can anyone sit here and say the Albion are not capable of going to Marseille, Amsterdam and Athens and getting a result in all three games?

Aside from the hurt in losing on the Albion’s biggest stage, since probably the 1983 FA Cup final, another huge disappointment on the night was the Uefa ticket situation.

A number of fans I know in the 1901 club had to move from their existing seats, because Europe’s governing body effectively ‘compulsory purchased’ them off the Albion for the benefit of sponsors,

yet I took my seat for one of the biggest night’s in the club’s history with 14 empty seats in front of me. Clearly the Uefa sponsors didn’t fancy it! But the Albion could clearly have resold those tickets to real fans.

I know De Zerbi will do his utmost to rectify the issues on the pitch, let’s hope the ticket situation will be sorted out by the time Ajax visit the Amex next month.