Those marvelling at Leicester City’s extraordinary season have been rather fond of comparisons between where they are now, and where they were a year ago. So here’s another one for you: at this stage last season, Brighton and Hove Albion were 18th in the Championship and would slip to 20th by May, two places away from relegation. Now, Chris Hughton’s side are third in the table and could move into the automatic promotion spots with a win against Fulham on Friday night.
Rated as 33-1 outsiders back in August (only seven of the division’s 24 teams were longer), they have achieved a dramatic turnaround that nonetheless seems to fit their manager’s image quite nicely: relatively low-key, quietly efficient, not flashy but certainly effective. Brighton’s victory against Nottingham Forest on Monday was their 10th in the past 15, a run that has left them behind only Middlesbrough and Burnley in the table.
Indeed, because of how the remaining fixtures have fallen – Burnley host Boro on Tuesday, who in turn play Brighton on the last day of the season – all three clubs are in the slightly curious position of having their fate in their own hands. All three know that if they win the next five games they will be promoted.
For Brighton, that is quite an achievement, particularly when you consider the top two have been able to spend heavily on the likes of Andre Gray, Jordan Rhodes, Stewart Downing and David Nugent: Hughton’s big summer signing was the 35-year-old Bobby Zamora on a free.
That is not to say this Brighton squad has been cobbled together with bits of string and luncheon vouchers, but they have had to recruit smartly. Fewer mistakes can be absorbed for a team of their means, which is why Hughton and the club’s head of recruitment, Paul Winstanley, spend so much time making sure the players they target have been the right ones. And this season at least, their hit rate has been pretty good, with Tomer Hemed, Beram Kayal and Connor Goldson a few of the less heralded pieces of business that have turned out very nicely indeed.
In addition Jiri Skalak, a Czech winger who has an impressive line in dead balls and crosses, arrived in January, as did perhaps the final creative cherry on top, Anthony Knockaert, signed from Standard Liege and who in another universe might have been part of the extraordinary goings on at Leicester.
All of which has given them great depth: against Forest, Hughton was able to give Knockaert a break by leaving him on the bench; the Manchester United loanee James Wilson has not been able to get near the team in recent weeks; while the club captain, Gordon Greer, is being kept out of the side by Goldson, the 23-year-old signed from Shrewsbury in the summer.
“One thing we certainly wanted was to have that type of competition,” Hughton says. “That’s been a major plus for us, and it’s been shown in recent games what effect they can have.”
He is not wrong: Skalak has set up four goals in the past three games, while Knockaert changed the game when he came on against Forest.
Brighton’s past few seasons have seen significant flux, to say the least. In the past three years they have had four managers; Gus Poyet took them to the playoffs but was constantly winking at bigger clubs, Óscar García achieved the same but promptly resigned, and Sami Hyypia was an ill-suited disaster. Hughton’s arrival on New Year’s Eve in 2014 at least brought a sense of calm and stability, taking them from the brink of relegation to safety by mid-March, with enough of a cushion to survive a late-season dip and remain in the division by six points.
That calmness is one of the reasons that these final five, potentially very tense games do not seem to be fazing squad nor manager at all. “It’s very, very much business as usual,” says Hughton. “This group have been very level-headed all season. We went through a difficult period after going so long undefeated [after not losing any of their first 21 games, they then went seven without a win], but they showed a real desire to come through that.”
Since a 1-0 victory against Blackburn in January, Brighton have lost just once (a bizarre, 4-1 aberration at Cardiff) and won 10, conceding only 12 goals in the process. And now here they are, promotion in their own hands and at a stage in the season where nerves do not so much jangle as clank like enormous church bells. Having someone like Hughton at the helm should steady things in the last few fixtures, though.
“He’s done that all the way through,” says David Stockdale, the goalkeeper who a few years ago was on the brink of the England team, and could well be again soon. “He gets things across in a way that you can’t not listen, and you can’t not be intrigued with what he’s got to say. Against Forest, we played quite well in the first half, but in the second that was probably our worst for a long time, and he told us – but he didn’t have to shout. That’s where he comes into his own – he knows we know, so there’s no point in coming in and shouting at us. It’s experience, and being a top-class manager.
“If you put anyone in [anywhere in the team] we’re settled. It feels like you can slot anyone in [anywhere]. If I could run I could probably play anywhere because we’ve done that much training on it.”
So with promotion this close, would Hughton regard the season as a failure if they do not go up, bearing in mind where they were a year ago? “Of course expectations levels rise. It’s normal,” Hughton says. “We absolutely deserve to be where we are now. When you’ve done that all season like we have, you want to finish the season well. I think if we don’t, there will be a disappointment. There’s a drive within the group to do that.”
