For your next trick, Roberto, go to suddenly on-fire West Ham without almost a whole outfield team - including Lewis Dunk - and get another win.

Such is life in the Premier League for Albion right now.

Roberto De Zerbi knows that. He said as much after the 4-2 win over Tottenham.

Add the skipper to the list of absentees and wait, see and hope on Igor and Facundo Buonanotte.

Hope Pervis Estupinan can now convert 45 minutes (actually, 56) into 70, even 90-plus.

And come up with another plan to match that which saw off Spurs.

Albion’s final win of 2023 was a triumph of tactics, faith and execution.

For the haste in which the whole thing was put together and made to work, it deserves to go down as one of their best wins under De Zerbi.

Okay, it’s time to be honest on two counts.

I turned up at the Amex with reduced hope and expectation.

And, having been enthralled by what I saw, I went home slightly disappointed at some of the reaction, which seemed more obsessed with the tricky last ten minutes than the outstanding first 80.

I hadn’t written the game off in terms of a result.

De Zerbi’s tenure has made us believe anything is possible.

But, even with Tottenham also missing players, I looked at how many - and what type of - key men Albion had lost and thought, if they were to get anything, it would be chiselled out.

Win ugly. A bit like they managed in Athens, perhaps.

It was hard to see them causing problems with no wing players.

And that, in turn, might lead to the crowd getting impatient.

But De Zerbi had spoken on Wednesday about having to work harder and better than ever to come up with answers.

By that time, he must have known how he would play it on the night and had an inkling it would work.

There was brave man-to-man marking, the most striking image of which was the gangly frame and shock of fair hair that is Jan Paul van Hecke appearing in all sorts of areas of the pitch.

There was movement in attack, led by Danny Welbeck, and a change in how they played from the back.

There were wide, or lateral, midfielders rather than full-backs and wingers.

And an ability and awareness for players to fill in for colleagues when needed.

Tottenham started brightly. But it was those early chances for Welbeck, albeit unconverted, which reassured you for what was to come.

That Albion, with five wingers missing and ten players absent from the starting XI in all, would be able to land a few blows of their own.

The crowd bought into it and were superbly supportive all night.

It was a different game. Not the usual case of Albion trying to a pick a way through massed ranks within 30 yards of the opposition goal.

But the longer game seemed to liberate them in some ways. They seemed to enjoy it.

De Zerbi said: “We changed everything because we needed something different.

“I am enjoying it a lot and I have to be proud because I am working harder than the first part of the season.

“We have to find different solutions.

“We have to think better and more and to take some risks.

“Sometimes it is difficult to prepare a game in a different way in two days.

“For it I said I am lucky to be the boss of Brighton, of these players.”

So, while the final ten minutes or so might have taken some of the immediate gloss off the night, maybe it also underlined how good the first 80 had been.

This was a dangerous Tottenham side. We should not forget that.

Albion had done magnificently to lead them by four clear goals.

They needed the win to keep pace with teams above them but also to fend off fast-rising outfits such as Wolves and Bournemouth.

To redress that narrative from further afield - if we are really bothered about such things - that this has been a “miserable” run for the Seagulls.

And there is another storyline at play, of course.

In the week since the draw with Crystal Palace, there appeared to have been some doubt over De Zerbi’s commitment to the longer-term cause and suggestions he might want out.

Some people who watch TV interviews and look into comments at press conferences have sensed a change of mood.

From being in those press conferences, I have not felt such a change.

De Zerbi will want certain things from the transfer window.

There will be discussions and he might not like or agree with everything he hears from Tony Bloom, Paul Barber and David Weir.

But my sense would be that his underlying belief in what Albion are trying to do is unaltered.

Reminding a few people that they do not have the means of those with whom they are competing - and they are beating - is not in itself a sign of wanting out.

The Albion way to battle against untold riches is to be more astute, ahead of the game, to out-think their rivals. They did it on the pitch on Thursday.