No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no no no NOGAN

The Brighton & Hove Albion career of Kurt Nogan ended in a whimper rather than a blaze of glory. Had the Welsh born striker not embarked on a 20 game goalless run to complete his two-and-a-half years at the Goldstone Ground, then he’d probably be the proud owner of the best goals-to-game ratio of any Albion centre forward to have played more than 100 games for the club.

Better than Peter Ward. Better than Bobby Zamora. Better than Glenn Murray. Better than Kit Napier. None of those great strikers would have come close to the scoring feats of No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no no no Nogan, as the North Stand used to sing to 2 Unlimited’s No Limit.

In his first 100 games for the Albion, Nogan scored 60 times. Had he maintained that strike rate before his £250,000 move to Burnley in February 1995, then he’d have ended his Brighton career with 72 goals in less than three seasons.

The best word to describe Nogan was an enigma. During that barren run of form which brought down the curtain on his time in Hove, he looked at times like a man who’d never played professional football in his life.

The same was true when he arrived at the Goldstone in October 1992. Kurt Nogan was in an out of the Brighton first team during his first few months with the club, being wonderfully described with unerring accuracy as looking like “a fish out of water.”

He struggled to lead the line on his debut as the Albion lost 1-0 away at Rotherham United, drew 1-1 at home to Hartlepool United and were then held to a 1-1 FA Cup First Round draw by Woking.

Most Brighton fans were wondering what the hell Barry Lloyd had signed. Nogan’s next opportunity came in the Autoglass Trophy at home to Bournemouth and even though he scored against the Cherries, he still resembled somebody who didn’t actually know what they were doing.

The goal itself was ridiculously fortuitous. Bournemouth goalkeeper Vince Bartram attempted to clear, the ball hit Nogan in the arse and rebounded past Bartram to just about trickle over the line and into the South Stand net. It was hardly the type of finish that you made think here’s the next Alan Shearer.

And yet that lucky goal netted via his posterior did in fact turn Nogan into one of the most deadly marksman in England. Between December 19th 1992 and the final game of the season on May 8th 1993, Nogan netted 22 goals in 37 appearances.

Finally, Nogan was showing the sort of form that had marked him out as a real prospect at his first club, Luton Town. Kurt and older brother Lee Nogan were spotted playing Sunday League football by the Hatters and invited for a trial; Kurt was taken on, Lee wasn’t. Lee would instead join Oxford United and enjoyed an impressive goal-laden career himself.

Kurt marked his Luton debut as a 19-year-old with a goal in a 2-2 top flight draw against Liverpool in January 1990. Five months later, he notched on his first appearance for Wales Under 21s against Poland.

As Brighton would later discover, the way to get the best out of Nogan was by giving him a run of games. He was never granted that opportunity at Luton, making 17 starts and 16 substitute appearances as he slipped in and out of a struggling side.

After three seasons and three goals, Luton decided to cut their losses and Nogan was released in the summer of 1992. He was rejected by Peterborough United after an unsuccessful trial and turned down a move to Colchester United himself.

The dole queue was beckoning when Brighton reserve team manager Larry May invited Nogan to the Goldstone. Two goals in two reserve games saw Lloyd offer him a short term deal and once Nogan’s backside had sparked that remarkable scoring run in the second half of the 1992-93 season, that was turned into a longer term deal.

Brighton struggled in the opening months of the 1993-94 season and Lloyd eventually paid with his job. Not even playing in a relegation threatened team could derail the Nogan train, his 10 goals in the first half of the campaign keeping Brighton’s heads just above the line.

Liam Brady arrived in December 1993 and that pushed Nogan onto even greater heights. Despite his goal scoring feats, Nogan was often a lazy player who would rather be in Ladbrokes or downing pints in a West Street nightclub than on a football pitch.

Discipline had become slack in the final weeks and months of Lloyd’s reign amongst the more professional individuals of the Albion squad, let alone a bloke like Nogan.

The appointment of Brady put a hugely respected figure and one of the finest players of his generation into the Goldstone dugout. If you didn’t want to perform for Brady, chances are you wouldn’t want to perform for anyone.

And boy did Nogan perform. On New Year’s Day 1994, he became the first Brighton player to score a hat-trick for three years with a treble in a 4-1 home win over Cambridge United.

The Albion played some scintillating football under Brady. Following that hammering of Cambridge, they lost just seven of their remaining 25 games in the 1993-94 season to move into the safety of mid table.

Nogan’s goals were a major reason for that. He added 16 to his season’s total in those 25 matches that Brady was in charge for, finishing the campaign with 26 from 48 appearances.

No player since Albert Munday in the 1950s had scored 20 goals for Brighton in back-to-back seasons and only Zamora has achieved it since Kurt Nogan in the intervening 26 years.

That form earned Nogan a Welsh B cap and saw him voted as the Albion’s Player of the Season, winning a brand new television. As somebody posted on North Stand Chat, Nogan probably pawned said television for extra money to spend in the bookies.

More important than brand new televisions or the 3.25 at Wincanton was the interest Nogan was now attracting. Premier League clubs were rumoured to be circling with Liverpool and Everton looking to give Nogan another shot at the top flight with hard-up Albion set to receive a record fee in excess of £1 million for their sensational striker.

Nogan just had to keep on scoring in the 1994-95 season. Given the manner in which they had finished the previous campaign, the Albion were considered by some as dark horses in the Division Two promotion race.

Both Brighton and Kurt Nogan certainly started the season well, Nogan rattling in 12 goals from the first 15 games.

Goal number 12 came at Filbert Street, where the Albion delivered a stunning performance to defeat Premier League Leicester City 2-0 in a League Cup second round second leg tie, giving them a stunning 3-0 victory on aggregate. With two goals against the Foxes, Nogan had showed that he could score against top flight opposition.

And yet after that, he couldn’t buy a goal for love nor money against Division Two defences. That strike at Leicester proved to be his final goal in an Albion shirt.

Had you suggested at full time of that famous night at Filbert Street that Kurt Nogan wouldn’t score again for Brighton, you’d have been sectioned. After all, this was a guy who scored at a better rate than one goal every other game.

But two games passed without a goal. Then four. Then six. Then eight. Brighton fans with short memories who quickly turn on players isn’t just a recent, Amex Stadium-bred phenomenon and Nogan very quickly became the boo boys new favourite.

He went from a man being courted by Liverpool to being the butt of jokes and mockery among the Goldstone faithful, which clearly didn’t help his confidence. It also strained his relationship with Albion supporters.

The goal drought reached 20 and there was much relief when Burnley came calling and Brighton somehow convinced the Clarets to pay £250,000 for the services of a striker without a goal in five months.

Nogan for his part spoke about joining a bigger club, a sure-fire way to guarantee that you leave under a cloud even without a hideous run of form.

Brady brought John Byrne back to the Goldstone to replace Nogan and although the return of a former goal scoring hero pleased supporters, Byrne was 34 years old and winding down his career. As Brighton struggled to score, they slipped from outsiders for a playoff place to a final finishing position of 16th.

Nogan meanwhile rediscovered his touch at Burnley. He was named in the PFA Division Two Team of the Season at the end of the 1995-96 season after scoring 26 times for the Clarets – a ridiculous total given that he was playing for a side who spent most of the campaign battling against relegation.

With grim predictability, one of those goals came when the Albion suffered a 3-0 defeat at Turf Moor. Nogan celebrated like a man who’d just won the lottery (or had a 12/1 shot come in at Chepstow), just to further antagonise the Albion support who had once adored and then mercilessly mocked him.

Don’t worry though – it wasn’t just Brighton who Nogan upset. In fact, the way he left the Albion pales into insignificance compared to how his Burnley career ended.

Nogan had always had a somewhat questionable attitude – and it makes you wonder how far he could have gone if he’d been a better professional who was less fond of drinking and gambling – but he took it to new extremes at Burnley.

Within three months of his arrival at Turf Moor, he managed to fall out with manager Jimmy Mullen over a substitution.

Nogan’s scoring feats in the 1995-96 season appeased the locals until talks over a new contract stalled the following year, at which point Nogan called into a local radio phone-in to lambaste Mullen’s replacement, Adrian Heath.

According to Clarets Mad, Nogan wasn’t just unhappy with Burnley but he was showing it by spending “evenings in Indian restaurants and all that entailed” rather than concentrating on his football.

Nogan now had both Burnley supporters and his manager gunning for him. Not that he was quite finished there; he well and truly burned his bridges when he made the cardinal sin of engineering a move to Burnley’s arch rivals Preston North End for £150,000 in February 1997.

This being Nogan, he was a regular scorer for PNE whenever they came up against Burnley – and he of course enjoyed every minute of tormenting his former employees.

Nogan’s career came to a premature end at the age of just 30 thanks to a serious knee injury. He was back in Wales by then, a move which should have been the definition of “living the dream” as he joined boyhood club Cardiff City.

Instead, it turned into something of a nightmare. Nogan managed just six starts and 16 substitute appearances for the Bluebirds which yielded only one goal.

The last appearance of his professional career came on March 17th 2001 as Cardiff hammered Carlisle United 4-1 at Ninian Park. Alan Cork’s side would go onto finish the Division Three season in second place behind Micky Adams’ Brighton.

Nogan was linked with a return to the Albion during his time at Ninian Park. Had that ever happened, it would have been interesting to see whether he could have repaired his reputation among those Brighton supporters who view his two-and-a-half years at the Goldstone through the prism of that 20 game goalless run at the end.

Given his injury troubles, it’s probably just as well Kurt Nogan didn’t rejoin Brighton. The likelihood is he would have struggled to replicate the form that had made him one of the lower league’s most feared strikers a decade earlier, and he would have been subjected to even more derision from Albion fans.

That wouldn’t have been fair on a player who already doesn’t receive anywhere near as much credit as he should for his one-in-two scoring ratio for Brighton. The city’s bookmakers would probably have been happy with a Nogan return, but nobody else.