Saturday 13th April. Brighton are at home to Bournemouth. I am in town and there are no issues that would realistically stop me getting to the Amex and yet I have decided not to go. Partly this is because I am running the Brighton Marathon the next day, and partly this is because a glance at BTTS and win tips on offer weren't at all encouraging. I have friends from out of town coming down to stay and run in it too and I have a straight forward choice between meeting them for a late lunch in town or going to the game. Nine times out of ten I would pick the game. Sorry friends, see you tomorrow. But not this time. We have been so abject of late that I’m glad to have an excuse not to go. I pack my son off with my friend Steve to go to the game and I go in to town for a late lunch and a lime and soda.
By five thirty Steve is back with my son and I am staring blankly at a phone that tells me we’ve lost 5-0 at home and had a straight red. There has been mutiny in the camp. My son is nearly frozen but didn’t want to leave early, but EVERYONE was leaving early. Everyone. My fragile pre-marathon state cannot cope with it. I wait for the inevitable NSC poll and vote Hughton out. My son, previously as staunchly pre-CH as me is nearly in tears. “He has to go dad”. With the benefit of hindsight you’d think any other chairman would pull the trigger at this point. Bloom keeps his powder dry.
Perhaps this is because we have another huge game on Tuesday, a chance to pull clear of Cardiff, to effectively send them down. Even a draw puts us in the driving seat. Just don’t lose. And yet confidence is at its lowest ebb of the season and, having missed a straight forward chance, we immediately go behind to a worldy, and, again, that might as well be it. We could still have been running around on Wednesday and not scored.
Saturday 27th April. Home to Newcastle. But first, Cardiff have to go to Fulham in a 3pm kick off, and miraculously they have been falling behind us since winning at the Amex. There is a huge crowd in the concourses fixed on the telly and when news come through that Fulham have taken a 1-0 lead the roof nearly comes off. The atmosphere is electric. If anything should inspire our team to the result we need, it’s this.
Down below us in the dressing room Hughton is putting the finishing touches to a 4-4-2 formation. A what now? A great article from The Tactician has highlighted the folly of this far better than I can but it’s certainly odd. Gross on the right wing. Pascal Gross with that lack of pace of his. Andone and Murray together. All season these two have been more like opponents than team mates. I can’t be bothered to check out the exact stats but I would be amazed if they’d played more than a few minutes together. It’s one or the other. Now it’s both.
The Albion come out and force a free kick close to the Newcastle area. It’s hands down the worst free kick we’ve ever taken. Newcastle push up from the back, Murray neglects his duties and the rest of the spine are in no-man’s land. They go one up and the goal is a football crime. We are AWFUL. A better side would score another five. Luckily Newcastle don’t, Hughton changes it up, the players respond, Gross, moved in and up, scores the Amex goal we’ve all been waiting for and we draw. Palace do the rest the following week and we’re safe. Hughton has survived. Right? Wrong.
Because, with the benefit of hindsight, it wasn’t just that. I didn’t go to the Bournemouth game using the marathon as an excuse but, really, it was the pathetic capitulation at home to Southampton, drawing away to a Millwall team more suited to League One than the Premier League, a rolling over at Chelsea (who’d just struggled at Cardiff), losing two goal leads at West Ham and Fulham, getting stuffed at home by effing Burnley. I was a Hughton fan, I’d defended him to the hilt, cheered him from the rafters and now, even I realised his time was up. Why? Because in the five short years he’d been our manager football had moved on massively. Hughton hadn’t.
Chris arrived to save the Albion from Hyypia on New Year’s Eve 2014. That season Chelsea won the Premier League with ten fewer points than second place Liverpool achieved this season. The Champions League final was played between Juventus and Barcelona. The following season Leicester City won it with 81 points and Liverpool were not even in the top five. England, meanwhile, crashed out of the group stage of the 2014 World Cup at the bottom of a group that was won by Costa Rica and no one was really sure why new manager Gareth Southgate had been appointed. And Ostersund? A team we’d never heard of, managed by an Englishman we’d never heard of, were promoted to Sweden’s top division in October of 2015. They finished eighth in their first season in the top league, winning Potter plaudits for playing attractive football on a shoestring budget.
Of course, today we have all four European club finalists. We have not one but two teams scoring over 97 points in the Premier League. England have been to a World Cup semi-final and have won World Cups at Under 17 and Under 20 level. Ostersund have beaten Arsenal at the Emirates, having finished level with Atletic Bilboa in the Europa League group stages. And Chris? Having left Norwich just above the Premier League safety zone with fan complaints of dull, safety first football he has now left Brighton just above the Premier League safety zone with fan complaints of dull, safety first football.
That over simplifies things and does a great disservice to all the excellent achievements of Albion’s erstwhile boss, a distinguished and honourable man and genuine hero of Sussex. But it’s there to underline that there is a moving world and a world where things stand still. There is a whole other debate about what caused this. Could he have changed?
Did he want to change? Only Chris will know, and he’s not telling. However, by the end we became incredibly predictable. At home? Press us. We had neither the pace nor the calmness on the ball to pass and break through it and would soon revert to long, risky diagonal balls. Away? Wait for someone to pop the tyres on that bus parked in our half. A goal, a flashpoint, a bit of luck would normally do it. Thank goodness it didn’t at Wolves.
What also stayed the same was how much respect Hughton earned and deserved. I feel hugely rotten writing this. And with his pragmatic approach, with his calm refusal to get too upset or too excited, Chris has endeared himself to just about everyone, and failed to keep up with the changing world of British football. That world is currently Southgate’s and Klopp’s and Pep’s. Is it currently Ashworth and Potter’s? More importantly, with a four year deal, can Potter move with the times himself? Only time will tell.
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