Martin Hinshelwood: 12 weeks a Brighton manager

Monday July 15th 2002. A gabble of football journalists gathered at the Grand Hotel to find out who Dick Knight had appointed as successor to Peter Taylor after an 11 week search. Not many were expecting to see Martin Hinshelwood unveiled as the next Brighton manager.

Even Hinshelwood himself seemed pretty surprised to be there. He told the press conference: “I got a phone call at 10.30am today asking me to meet Dick for lunch. It all happened very quickly. I’ve signed a two-year contract and I’ll take this opportunity with both hands.”

The whole thing was weird. Brighton had spent nearly three months looking for the right man to lead them into their first season in the second tier of English football for a decade.

There were just three-and-a-bit weeks until the 2002-03 season began. No new signings had arrived due to the impasse. The players had been back in training for two weeks without knowing who the manager would be.

The club insisted that the delay was necessary as they wanted to get the decision right. And then Knight appointed the Albion’s Director of Youth, who could have been given the job within days of Taylor handing in his resignation because he did not believe Brighton had the budget to compete in Division One.

Numerous other candidates were linked with the job in the 11 weeks between Taylor quitting and Hinshelwood’s promotion to the hot seat.

Former Wimbledon boss Terry Burton was seen as a safe pair of hands. Tony Adams had his supporters despite being a rookie boss. His future struggles when given opportunities by Wycombe Wanderers and Portsmouth suggest the Albion had a lucky escape.

And the less said about appointing Graham Rix – who had just been replaced at Portsmouth by Harry Redknapp – the better.

Away from the rumour mill, Brighton had concrete interest in three managers – none of whom were Hinshelwood. Former Albion midfielder Danny Wilson was one, but Bristol City refused Knight permission to talk to Wilson about the role.

Steve Coppell had been hot favourite at one point. He was vastly experienced, used to working on a budget and available having left Brentford a few weeks after guiding the Bees into the Division Two playoffs.

Coppell was interviewed but according to Knight’s autobiography, the former Crystal Palace boss fell asleep in their meeting after attending straight off a long-haul flight.

That convinced Knight that Coppell was not the man for the job. A costly mistake given that within three months, Coppell would be succeeding Hinshelwood with Brighton rooted to the bottom of the table having collected only four points from 12 games.

In a quite ridiculous turn of events, Knight went from turning down Coppell in the summer of 2002 to offering him a 10 year contract in the summer of 2003 to remain with the Albion until 2013.

The most intriguing candidate was Winfried Schafer. The German-born coach had just finished managing Cameroon at the 2002 World Cup. Knight said in his book that he decided against appointing Schafer over concerns that his English was not good enough following a meeting between the pair.

Knight’s version of events is at odds with a fantastic old wives’ tale regarding Schafer. Legend says that Schafer had agreed to take over and was due to be revealed at the July 15th press conference, only to have a last minute change of heart on the morning of his unveiling.

Rather than facing the embarrassment of cancelling the announcement and moving even closer towards the new season without a manager, Knight instead asked Hinshelwood to bail him out of a hole and take the job.

How true that is we will never know. What cannot be refuted however is that Martin Hinshelwood should never have been appointed Brighton boss.

Knight put Hinshelwood in a difficult position by offering him a job could scarcely refuse, even though the world and his wife suspected that he would be out of his depth.

Hinshelwood was charged with keeping in Division One a weaker squad than Brighton had begun their 2000-01 Division Three title winning season with. It looked a challenging task for an experienced manager. For a rookie one, it was nigh-on impossible.

Which is why Hinshelwood’s reign elicits feelings of pity rather than anger. That is unusual; most managers who oversee a 10 game losing streak and put a club firmly on the path to relegation end up hated.

Instead, Brighton fans ended up feeling sorry for Hinshelwood. A decent, loyal bloke thrown in at the deep end. With his swimming trunks off.

If anything, Hinshelwood was too loyal. Brighton desperately needed reinforcements as soon as he was appointed. The difference in class between third and second tiers was massive, even before the Albion lost several key players from Taylor’s promotion winners.

The summer of 2002 had seen Simon Morgan retire, Junior Lewis return to Leicester City following the completion of his loan spell and Gary Hart ruled out with a broken leg.

Rather than bring in the quality and knowhow needed to survive in Division One, Hinshelwood was determined to give the players that won back-to-back promotions the chance to prove themselves in the second tier.

As former Director of Youth, he also had unwavering faith in the youngsters who had progressed through the Under 18s and into the first team set up.

That leads nicely into the second surreal story from Hinshelwood’s brief reign in charge. One arguably even more ludicrous than the rumours of Martin Hinshelwood landing the Brighton job because Schafer was a no-show and Knight did not want egg on his face.

Knight writes in his autobiography of going to watch a young Arsenal side with a view to taking a couple of players on loan shortly after Hinshelwood’s appointment.

Steve Sidwell and Kolo Toure were the players in question. When Knight revealed the good news to Hinshelwood, he was a little surprised that his new manager said he did not need any prospects from the Gunners because he had Daniel Marney and Shaun Wilkinson.

In fact, the only signing Hinshelwood made in the the time between taking the job and the opening game of the campaign was backup goalkeeper Andy Petterson.

Brighton went to Burnley so short of options at centre back that when Danny Cullip was ruled out, they had to play reserve right back Robbie Pethick in the heart of defence alongside 17-year-old Adam Hinshelwood. There was Martin’s loyalty again, throwing his nephew in for a debut in a tough looking encounter at Turf Moor.

Nepotism was the word doing the rounds before kick off. By full time, young Adam was walking off as the Albion’s man-of-the-match and Brighton were coming away from Burnley with a 3-1 win. Maybe this Division One thing would be easy after all?

Or not. That was as good as it got for Hinshelwood. Following a decent 0-0 draw at home to Coventry City in his first Withdean match at the helm, Brighton lost their next 10 Division One matches in a row.

Injuries to Michel Kuipers and Bobby Zamora deprived Hinshelwood of the services of his two most important players for over a month. That wretched luck did not help his prospects of remaining in the job for longer than three months.

Recruitment though was terrible. When the penny dropped that Wilkinson and Marney might not be the players needed to keep Brighton up, Martin Hinshelwood blew a sizable chunk of his budget on Paul Kitson and Guy Butters.

Kitson had a winter hibernation pattern that would make a tortoise blush, never daring to exit the physio room until April and warmer weather arrived.

Butters meanwhile arrived in a condition which made John Prescott look like an Olympic marathon runner. Butters would go onto enjoy a successful career with the Albion, but he was hardly what Brighton needed at the time that Hinshelwood brought him in from Gillingham.

Having passed up Sidwell and Toure, Hinshelwood did end up accepting a player from Arsenal – striker Graham Barrett. A red card on his debut away at Portsmouth and one goal from 31 appearances tells its own story.

Petterson completed a foursome of ghastly signings. He did at least provide the perfect image to sum up the Hinshelwood era when falling over his own leg whilst attempting to run backwards, leaving him lying on his back like a woodlouse who has been turned over as 10-man Gillingham scored their fourth of the afternoon into an open goal.

Defeats to Norwich City, Wimbledon, Walsall, Pompey, Millwall, the Gills, Stoke City, Rotherham United, Grimsby Town and Watford did for Hinshelwood.

In the middle of that sequence was a brief respite when Exeter City visited Withdean in the League Cup. Wilkinson scored his one and only Brighton goal as Martin Hinshelwood tasted his second victory as boss, although the Albion did need extra time to see off opponents who would end the 2002-03 season relegated to the Conference.

By Tuesday 8th October 2002, Hinshelwood was relieved of his managerial duties and given the title of Director of Football. It was basically his old job with a few bells on.

Coppell came in to take over first team affairs. The Albion needed to average 1.5 points per game over the remainder of the season to stand a chance of avoiding relegation. They had taken just 0.3 under Hinshelwood.

From a hopeless situation, Brighton somehow went into the final day knowing that victory at Grimsby would see them survive. They ultimately fell short in drawing 2-2 at Blundell Park, but even so the turnaround under Coppell had been remarkable.

What might have been had Knight appointed Coppell rather than Hinshelwood in the first place? An 11 week search to appoint a manager who was sacked 12 weeks later is quite something. Poor Martin.