Brighton’s debut scoring number sevens

Neal Maupay marked his Brighton debut with a goal just 17 minutes after being introduced as a substitute in the 3-0 win away at Watford. We shouldn’t have been surprised. He was wearing the number seven shirt after all.

The £20m signing from Brentford is just the latest in a long line of players to be handed the squad number seven and go onto score on their first appearance in the stripes.

Since the Football League made squad numbering mandatory for the 1999-00 season, it’s happened on six occasions. That run started with Darren Freeman’s hat-trick during the 6-0 Withdean win over Mansfield and has encompassed some great Albion players – Leon Knight – and some not-so-great ones too – Adrian Colunga, anyone?

Here are all of Brighton’s debut scoring number sevens.

Darren Freeman – Brighton 6-0 Mansfield, August 7th 1999
This wasn’t just a scoring debut – this was a hat-trick scoring debut. Darren Freeman was the first player to wear the number seven shirt in the era of squad numbers and he gave it the most memorable of starts with a hat-trick in the Albion’s first game at Withdean, the 6-0 triumph over Mansfield Town.

Freeman ended that 1999-00 season as top scorer but suffered terribly with injuries from that point on. He eventually retiring in the summer of 2002 with an Albion career record of 13 goals from 62 appearances.
 

Leon Knight – Oldham Athletic 1-3 Brighton, August 9th 2003
Geoff Pitcher inherited the number seven shirt from Freeman but seeing as his main contribution to the Albion was to make Lee Steele appear sober, there was little prospect of him nabbing a debut goal.

Leon Knight had no such issues. His first appearance in a Brighton shirt saw him score two headers in a 3-1 win for Steve Coppell’s side away at Oldham Athletic on the opening day of the 2003-04 season.

It was the start of a brilliant campaign for Knight who fired the Albion to promotion that year, netting 27 goals – including the penalty which decided the Division Two play off final with Bristol City at the Millennium Stadium.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t anywhere near as prolific in the second tier and after falling out very publicly with Mark McGhee on what felt like a weekly basis, he was sold to Swansea City in January 2006.

Since then, Knight has worked his way through seven further clubs, been banned on at least occasion and now seems to spend most of his time posting highly entertaining but extremely questionable remarks on Twitter.
 

Gifton Noel-Williams – Brighton 1-1 Luton, March 25th 2006
Following Knight’s departure, Mark McGhee was forced to rely on the likes of Mark McCammon, Joe Gatting, Federcio Turienzo and Jake Robinson to get the goals to try and keep the Albion in the Championship. On loan deadline day, Dick Knight finally managed to give McGhee a shiny new striker on-loan from Burnley in Gifton Noel-Williams.

When we say shiny and new, what we actually mean is old, broken down and with no working knees. Noel-Williams was still a quality operator though and he showed that with a debut goal in the number seven shirt at home to Luton Town.

The striker’s arrival actually sparked Brighton’s best run of the season as seven points out of a possible 12 were picked up. It was too little, too late however and the Albion ended the campaign bottom of the table. Noel-Williams ending his brief Brighton career with two goals from seven games.
 

Will Hoskins – Cardiff City 1-3 Brighton, August 17th 2011
The number seven shirt worked its way through several wingers over the next five years with Alexandre Frutos, Dean Cox and Elliott Bennett all wearing it.

For the 2011-12 season, Gus Poyet handed the number to his £500,000 signing from Bristol Rovers, Will Hoskins. The striker was up there with the Paul Kitsons of this world in terms of being injury prone and he missed the first few weeks of the campaign while being on the shelf.

Hoskins’ debut eventually arrived away at Cardiff City. It was a memorable one as he scored the third goal in a 3-1 win against the much-fancied Bluebirds.

That was about as good as it got for Hoskins. The Amex’s treatment room became his second home to the point where he had to pay council tax on it and he made only 21 appearances for the Albion in three years, scoring just once more against Newcastle United in the FA Cup nearly 18 months later.
 

Adrian Colunga – Swindon Town 2-4 Brighton, August 26th 2014
Spanish striker Adrian Colunga was Hoskins’ successor as number seven and he marked his debut with a goal in a 4-2 win at Swindon Town in the second round of the League Cup in August 2014.

The fact that it took extra time and two controversial penalties from Jake Forster-Caskey to see off League One outfit Swindon Town 4-2 in the second round of the League Cup was an early sign of the shit that was to come under Sami Hyypia.

As for Colunga, well we actually quite liked him. After all, he’d turned up to his unveiling wearing what can only be described as a magician’s outfit.

And then there was the ridiculous red card he picked up for smashing a Fulham player off the ball, after which he walked slowly off the pitch with the Albion trailing in a game they desperately needed to win.

Chris Hughton seemingly wasn’t impressed by this flair attitude or a desire to look like Paul Daniels. As a result, Colunga’s Brighton career was over practically from the moment that Hughton replaced Hyypia in the dugout after four goals in 21 games.

Neal Maupay – Watford 0-3 Brighton, 10/08/19
Next in the number seven shirt came Beram Kayal, who also marked his Brighton debut with a goal. We’re not counting him in this list though as his consolation strike in a 3-2 home defeat to Nottingham Forest in February 2015 came while wearing 28 – he switched to seven for the start of the 2015-16 season.

The Israeli kept that number for the next four seasons before handing it over to Neal Maupay, who netted the final goal in the Albion’s 3-0 rout at Watford just five days after his £20m arrival from Brentford.

Maupay gave a decent account of himself at Vicarage Road and with an excellent goal scoring record at Championship level, hopes are high that he’ll be another Freeman or Knight – rather than a Colunga or Hoskins.