Dot Purvis remembers the last time Brighton and Hove Albion played in the top flight of football, 34 years ago. To celebrate, the football-mad octogenarian had her whole house painted in the club’s signature blue. But while her collection of seagulls and club paraphernalia in the front garden grew in the intervening years, the paint became faded.

Now it stands resplendent on Ryde Road once again, the sun’s rays reflecting off the stained-glass club badge proudly in the centre of her front door, a blue and white flag floating from an upstairs window. “I thought, I’ve supported them my whole life, and if I got out all my scarves and flags it might help them being up there,” she says mischievously.

The 83-year-old, who has followed the club home and away for more than 50 years, can barely contain her excitement for Albion’s first game in the Premier League on Saturday – against big hitters Manchester City, no less. “It’s very exciting, I always thought they’d do it. They deserved to be there, and now they are,” she says, quite unable to take the smile off her face.

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Purvis’s infectious enthusiasm can be found all over the south coast resort. Flags fly in windows, seagulls – the club’s emblem and nickname – are painted across buildings, and in pubs men look nervously into pints muttering: “Only 37 points and we’re probably safe.”

“Everybody is just buzzing, you can feel the goodwill in the city and all around the country. We are so proud of what we have achieved,” says punk poet and long-time supporter Attila the Stockbroker. “People think we’re going to get stuffed every week, we’re going to go straight back down – to say there is no pressure on us is an understatement.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dot Purvis outside her Albion-themed house. Photograph: Andrew Hasson/The Guardian

The battle to get here has been far from easy. Twenty years ago Brighton were facing the prospect of dropping out of the Football League altogether, and were saved only after eking out a draw on the final day of the season against Hereford. In 1997 fans had seen their beloved club mismanaged into the dirt, their home – the Goldstone Ground – sold. For 14 years they were without a stadium of their own, forced to take a humiliating 70-mile round trip to play their home games at Gillingham for two years, before playing at Withdean stadium – a former zoo that became an athletics track.

But from the edge of oblivion came the hope of rebirth. A new chairman and lifelong fan, Dick Knight, took over and steadied the ship. In 2009 he was followed by Brighton-born Tony Bloom, a poker-playing entrepreneur who made his millions in the gambling business and property. A fan-led campaign saw Albion supporters win the green light to build a new stadium. And Bloom invested more than £250m of his money into the club, building a ground and training facilities that finally opened in 2011.

“Frankly, compared to being on the edge of going out of the Football League with no ground, Man City at home is a piece of piss,” says Attila the Stockbroker, who played a key role in the supporters’ fight and whose poem Goldstone Ghosts is printed on the wall of the supporters’ bar.

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As the team walk out against City on Saturday, many will look to the poignant words which read: “And one day, when our new home’s built, and we are storming back/A bunch of happy fans without a care/We’ll look back on our darkest hour and raise our glasses high and say with satisfaction: we were there.”

At the end of Albion’s glorious last season – in which they achieved promotion with three games to spare – Bloom, a supporter from the age of seven, told the players, fans and club to have no fear. “We know that we have the inner strength to at least hold our own,” he said.

It is that spirit that long-time fans are desperate to keep hold of as the club moves into a league which regularly sees distinctly average players sold for multimillion-pound price tags and take home hundreds of thousands of pounds a week.

“At the end of last season the sense of pride was massive. This was a club that was almost extinct, that had to fight tooth and nail to be here,” says Alan Wares, co-host of the Albion Roar radio show and podcast. “That pride is still there, but as we get closer I just hope that the soul and the culture of the club is retained. I don’t want it to become somewhere that pulls away from the fans and chasing the dollars.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest View of Brighton and Hove Albion’s Amex stadium. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

The thought of facing a Man City side whose two fullbacks cost more than Albion’s stadium is also intimidating, he admits. “There’s a lot of nervous anticipation, I’d say,” says Wares. “This shit’s just got real.”

Long-time fan Purvis, who will be watching the game at home, is not about to let the nerves spoil her enjoyment. “It will be a good game I think – a draw would be brilliant,” she says.

Purvis has watched her team at four different grounds – the much-loved Goldstone (“such a good atmosphere”), Gillingham (“a nice ground, but we paid for it”) and Withdean (“fit for ducks”), before going to the Amex (“a lovely stadium”).

On Saturday, the former hospital cafeteria worker won’t be in the stadium – since the neighbour she used to go with died it is been harder to get there and the cold gets into her bones – but she will be watching thanks to her one guilty pleasure: a Sky Sports subscription.

Still, she hopes to get to a game before the season is out, hopefully to see them win – and as she gets older she gets ever more confident. “People said we would go straight back down last time, and we didn’t,” she says. “I think we could do a Leicester and win it – well, why not? Those other clubs aren’t all that clever just because they have got this money. We’ve got a good set of players and a good team spirit. All for the Albion!”