2010-11: The stuff of Champions as Poyet’s Brighton walk League One

Wednesday 29th December 2010. The 2010-11 League One season has reached its midway point and leaders Brighton & Hove Albion have just had to play for 83 minutes with only 10 men in their top-of-the-table with Charlton Athletic at Withdean Stadium.

Brighton boss Gus Poyet is giving his post match interview, stood out on the pitch in the freezing cold an hour after the game finished.

Poyet was always an articulate speaker, a man who could capture in words what it was to be involved with Brighton in this most exciting of seasons better than most.

As Poyet held court, he launched into one of his passionate rants. “It’s all about Brighton, it’s all about Brighton. To still play, it’s all about desire, commitment and being proud. It’s all about these players and it’s all about the fans.”

Gus was talking about the way his side had just drawn 1-1 with their closest pursuers, even after Ingio Calderon’s red card with only seven minutes on the clock. Poyet could though have been talking about the 2010-11 League One season as a whole, which was also all about Brighton.

The Albion have never dominated a division in the way that Poyet’s outstanding side did that year and it is doubtful they ever will again. Promotion was secured with five games to go, the title with four still to play and Brighton played a brand of football which blew every single opponent away.

All the experts said that you couldn’t get out of League One playing tiki taka out from the back. It might work for Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, but League One players trying it away at Oldham Athletic or Tranmere Rovers? No chance.

Poyet and the Albion didn’t just prove them wrong – they dismantled the theory that it wasn’t possible to get out of the second tier whilst passing the football.

It wasn’t like this was a weak division either. Eventual runners up Southampton had a side which was good enough to be a comfortable mid table outfit in the Premier League two seasons later.

Huddersfield Town went on a 43 game unbeaten streak and still couldn’t win promotion. Peterborough United possessed one of the most prolific front threes in League One history in Craig Mackail-Smith, Aaron McLean and George Boyd who plundered 106 goals that season and Bournemouth were about to begin their rise through the leagues under Eddie Howe.

And yet none of them could lay a glove on the Albion. The achievements of Poyet and his players – 95 points, 86 goals – would have been impressive in an average division.

To rack up those numbers in a league packed with future international stars and clubs who would make it to the top fight over the next couple of years was extraordinary.

The second half of the 2009-10 season had given us a glimpse of what was possible. Poyet announced his arrival at the Albion in some style, winning 3-1 away at Southampton in a ‘South Coast Derby’ live on Sky in November. He then spent the next six months overhauling the squad, bringing in footballers capable of playing the passing game that he wanted.

Brighton ended 2009-10 in 13th place and there were shades of the 1999-00 campaign in the way they finished. A decade earlier, Micky Adams’ side had enjoyed a 14 game unbeaten run which helped pave the way to winning the Division Three title in 2000-01.

Poyet’s side had a similar second half of the season, losing just three of their last 15 which left Brighton fans predicting a promotion push for 2010-11.

Some shrewd summer acquisitions reinforced that view. Poyet needed a ball playing centre half if his side were to play out from the back and so Gordon Greer arrived from Swindon Town for £250,000.

Not only did the Albion get an outstanding footballer for that price, but they also picked up a brilliant leader who was instantly made club captain.

The experienced Radostin Kishoshev signed on a free to anchor the midfield. Ashley Barnes turned a loan spell from Plymouth Argyle which had yielded four goals in eight games into a permanent transfer for £100,000 and in a sign of Brighton’s ambition, Scunthorpe United captain Matt Sparrow turned down a new contract with the Championship club to drop down to League One with the Albion.

Sexy Pete Brezovan broke his arm on the eve of the season which saw Poyet move for Casper Ankergren, whose comfort in possession made playing from the back easy.

The squad was completed a couple of weeks into the campaign when Kazenga LuaLua joined for a second loan spell from Newcastle United and a 21-year-old midfielder named Liam Bridcutt arrived after being released by Chelsea. By the end of the year, Poyet would describe Bridcutt as “good enough to play for Real Madrid” and nobody was arguing.

Brighton had an early chance to put down a marker for the 2010-11 season as their opening fixture took them to Swindon Town, the beaten playoff finalists three months previously.

Despite being without the services of the suspended Greer and Glenn Murray, the Albion eased to a 2-1 victory with Sparrow scoring twice on his debut.

If that was a debut to remember for the midfielder, then Greer had one to forget a week later. He was sent off after an hour for throwing an elbow into the face of Rochdale’s Anthony Elding in an off-the-ball incident with 51 minutes played.

The Albion were leading 1-0 at the time and Greer’s red proved costly when combined with an Ankergren howler as ‘Dale scored in the last minute to scrape a 2-2 draw at Withdean.

Brighton lost 1-0 at Sheffield Wednesday next and some of that 2010-11 pre season optimism was beginning to ebb away. That was until the unlikely source of Marcos Painter scored a winner with 10 minutes to go at home to Walsall on Saturday 28th August 2010. From there, Brighton didn’t look back.

LuaLua smashed one of the greatest goals Withdean saw with a free kick which nearly broke the Milton Keynes Dons net two weeks later. A point at Carlisle United was followed by a win at Plymouth before Oldham came to Withdean on Saturday 25th September 2010.

The Latics took the lead through Lewis Alessandra with half an hour on the clock. Barnes equalised just before half time and it looked like it would finish 1-1 right up until Fran Sandaza scored a 96th minute for the Albion.

Sandaza ripped his shirt off and Withdean exploded with the sort of brilliant, last minute, going mad on the running track scenes that kind of makes us miss the place.

The goal took Brighton to the top of the League One, a position they would not relinquish once in the 2010-11 season, remaining at the head of the table for the next eight months and 38 matches. More importantly, it showed that Poyet’s Brighton had guts and fight to go with all their undoubted style.

October brought two of the best away performances in Albion history – and both in top-of-the-table clashes. Second placed Charlton were blown away 4-0 at The Valley. Peterborough replaced them as Brighton’s nearest pursuers and a fortnight later, Poyet and his players went to London Road and won 3-0.

Gus described it as the perfect game of football and he was right. Posh boss Gary Johnson had spent the buildup portraying it as a cup final which put the hosts in bullish mood.

That didn’t last long. Barnes gave Brighton the lead inside of a quarter of an hour and Peterborough had so little of the ball that by the time the clock reached 25 minutes, Boyd was pissed off enough to get himself sent off.

The Albion missed a penalty and Joe Lewis in the home goal made five or six unbelievable saves. It is no exaggeration to say that Brighton could have won by eight or nine and it would have been completely deserved. A reminder again that this was first in League One playing second in League One and yet the gap was astronomical.

There was a slight wobble in November, sparked when Kazenga LuaLua broke a leg in a rare defeat at Hartlepool United. Chris Wood arrived on-loan from West Bromwich Albion to replace LuaLua, giving the Albion a front three of Murray, Barnes and Wood – an outrageous amount of firepower for a third tier side.

A 0-0 draw at Southampton could have been so much better had Wood not seen a penalty saved by Kelvin Davis. Missed spot kicks would become a running theme for Brighton throughout the 2010-11 season with eight in total being squandered by five different players. Poyet eventually took to hiding behind the dugout at Withdean whenever the Albion were awarded a penalty.

The Brighton boss also did his best to shy away from the FA Cup by naming weakened teams in the early rounds, but that just served to add to the enjoyment of the season.

Replays in rounds one and two meant we got to experience the full magic of the cup with trips to Woking and FC United of Manchester. Once those two non league outfits had been dispatched, Poyet started taking it a little more seriously and the Albion beat Portsmouth 3-1 at Withdean and Watford 1-0 at Vicarage Road before going out in round five to eventual runners up Stoke City.

It was the first time that the Albion had advanced that far in the competition for 24 years. Eliminating Pompey and Watford proved that Poyet had built a side who would be good enough to hold their own in the Championship if Brighton won promotion.

The Albion’s rivals were given some brief hope that the wheels might be coming off the Gus Bus in December. Defeat at Huddersfield was followed by the 1-1 draw with Charlton which sparked Poyet’s “It’s all about Brighton” interview.

Although drawing with a promotion rival having played for 83 minutes with 10 men was a good result, from the outside it made it five league games and six weeks without a win.

Avoiding defeat against the Addicks steadied the ship and three days later, Murray scored a New Year’s Day hat-trick as Leyton Orient were thrashed 5-0 at Withdean. 48 hours after that and the Albion came from 1-0 down to win 2-1 at Exeter City with Barnes popping up with a stoppage time winner.

The rut was over and Brighton rolled through January and February, picking up six wins, a draw and two defeats from their next nine matches.

By the time March arrived, Southampton had become the Albion’s biggest rivals for promotion. They had hope of overhauling the Seagulls – Nigel Adkins compared his side to Red Rum making a late charge in one particularly farcical interview – as a combination of that FA Cup run and winter postponements caused by snow and ice left Poyet’s side with an almighty fixture backlog.

Brighton would play eight times in four weeks in what was dubbed ‘Mad March‘. Speaking to the Together BHA podcast about Mad March, Poyet said, “An old friend said to me the best teams in the history of football have lost the league in March. And then I’m looking and we have got eight games. Great. And then we went…bang, bang, bang, bang.”

“I remember Dagenham & Redbridge (the eighth win in a row at Victoria Road). It was horrible. But it was the moment you knew we would be champions. We didn’t do five wins, two draws, a loss. We didn’t do six wins and two draws. We did eight in a row.”

Of those eight games, the most memorable was Carlisle United at Withdean. A ding-dong encounter went one way and the next, Harry Arter’s 92nd minute equaliser for the Cumbrians looking like it had secured a 3-3 draw.

And then in the 96th minute, Bridcutt hit a 25 yard volley with his weaker left foot to win it 4-3 for the Albion. “The stuff of dreams, the stuff of champions” as Johnny Cantor famously screamed over the BBC Sussex airwaves as the ball crashed into the back of the net.

Winning eight in a row equalled the club’s best-ever streak and included a first ever win at Yeovil Town and a very rare success at Brentford. Poyet’s side were putting bogey grounds to bed as well as making history.

More importantly, it left Brighton 13 points clear. Promotion was within touching distance and the Albion duly delivered it with another memorable 4-3 Withdean win, this time on a Tuesday night against Dagenham & Redbridge. Four days later and a 3-1 victory at Walsall secured the title.

Whilst Ankergren, Greer, Murray, Barnes, Bridcutt, Kishishev, Sparrow, Wood, Sandaza, Painter, Inigo Calderon, Adam El-Abd, Tommy Elphick, Gary Dicker, Elliott Bennett, Sexy Pete, Craig Noone, Lewis Dunk, Augustin Battipiedi, Cristian Baz and the rest celebrated becoming champions in front of a packed away end at the Bescot Stadium Poyet, gave another memorable interview.

“You don’t realise how happy you can make people,” said Gus. “They forget about everything today. They forget about health problems, about family problems, about financial problems. That’s football.”

That was Brighton in the 2010-11 season. A campaign the likes of which we will probably never see again.