Hughton follows Brighton back from the cold and on to solid ground
CHRIS HUGHTON has run through enough puddles to know when he is on solid ground. He has also been chilled to the core enough times to know the Brighton of 2015 is remarkably different to the club of the recent past.
The Goldstone Ground is long gone, so too its not-so-temporary replacement the Withdean, with its running track, tiny crowds and one end exposed to southerly blasts. A bleak scene for lower league football.
‘I watched many games there, scouting or for whatever reason,’ says Hughton (left). ‘I thought the same as most — It’s cold here.’
The club spent 12 years between 1999 and 2011 at that three-sided athletics venue, once rated the fourth worst stadium in the UK.
‘But they made it work for them,’ says Hughton. ‘How many promotions
did they get there? From the fourth tier to the second. This club made the most of what it had.’
They have rather a lot more these days than back then, so how far they can go from sturdier foundations?
Brighton travel to Burnley today as the second-placed team in the Championship. They have a wage bill outside the second tier’s top six, according to Hughton, but also the sort of infrastructure that belongs in the top flight.
When Paul Barber, the CEO, suggested they were ‘Premier League ready’ a couple of years back, Brighton were ridiculed, especially last season when they battled relegation, but it is hard to argue against his statement now.
‘It is the best training ground I’ve ever worked in,’ says Hughton. He is in a meeting room with four rows of chairs lined up in front of a cinema screen. It is where he and his staff meet with Tony Bloom, the chairman, to mull over recruitment targets.
Every detail in this £32million, Y-shaped building has been considered and analysed, from the curved walls of the communal areas to promote interaction, to the fact the Under-18s changing room is two full corridors away from the Under-21s’. A club source says that is to signify ‘the longest walk of your life’.
And there should be no praise spared for the odd couple at the controls — professional gambler Bloom and his safe bet Hughton.
Brighton are thriving with Bloom’s cash investment and Hughton is the man who has been here before, when he took Newcastle to the Championship title in 2010 before the club shabbily and harshly dismissed him.
‘Where we are surpasses our expectations,’ says Hughton. ‘There are big spenders in the Championship and we knew that. We aimed to put ourselves in a challenge for the play-off positions — no one would have put us as favourites.’
Amongst all the positivity, Hughton admits he is disappointed that — following the sackings of Chris Ramsey and Chris Powell from QPR and Huddersfield respectively — he is now one of only four black and minority ethnic managers in England’s top 92 clubs.
‘It is not because of their colour they have lost their positions,’ he says. ‘But it is sad, in an era when there is a real enthusiasm in the game for BAME managers at the top level, that we lose two good ones.
‘But at academy and grassroots there has definitely been progress. At least it is something we are talking about — a few years ago people were not. That is progress.’