Revealed: Brighton’s Team of the Decade

Who have been Brighton’s 18 best players of the 2010s? We decided to give the decision making process over to you by asking our WeAreBrighton.com followers to select for their favourite players in each and every position.

The votes have now been counted. Lining up in Chris Hughton’s 4-4-2 formation which delivered so much success in the Championship, we can now exclusively reveal Brighton’s Team of the Decade.

Goalkeeper: Maty Ryan
It’s easy to forget that Brighton’s current number one actually suffered a dodgy first few games between the posts for the Albion – to the point that many of us wondered if he was cut out for Premier League football. Chris Hughton even responded by signing Tim Krul from Newcastle United on deadline day.

Since then, Ryan has proven himself to be one of the most dependable goalkeepers in the top flight. He was worth a good eight points in the 2017-18 season – we stayed up by seven that year – and in October last year he became the first ever Brighton player to win a Premier League PFA Player of the Month award. He also happens to be a bloody good bloke, which just adds to his popularity.

Right back: Bruno
What can you say about El Capitan that hasn’t been said already? 235 appearances. Six goals. Seven years service. Player of the Season 2015-16. Only the second man after Brian Horton to captain the Albion to promotion to the top flight. Great beard. Great player. And an even better bloke. Once a Seagull, always a Seagull.

Centre back: Lewis Dunk
When Gus Poyet handed youth team defender Lewis Dunk his senior debut away at MK Dons in April 2010, little did we know that we were watching a future Albion captain and England international.

What’s made Dunk’s rise to the top even more impressive is that it hasn’t always been plain sailing. Not only was there the spot of bother with the law which he was ultimately cleared of, but it also tends to go forgotten that he hardly played across the 2012-13 and 2013-14 campaigns. Then, after one good season in 2014-15, he tried to force through a summer move to Fulham by handing in a transfer request.

Rejecting that request was one of the best things that Tony Bloom has ever done as Albion chairman. There’s been no stopping Dunk since as he’s become of the finest centre backs in the country with 285 Brighton appearances to his name to date. Barring any major injury problems, he’ll join a select band of players to have represented the Seagulls 300 times before the end of this season. One of our own.

Centre back: Shane Duffy
Shane Duffy’s record at the time that Hughton forked out £4m for his services was interesting to say the least. He’d played five times for Blackburn Rovers by that point in the 2016-17 season, scored two goals at the right end, three own goals and been sent off.

While his four seasons at the Albion hasn’t quite been as thrill-a-minute as that, it’s not exactly been dull either. On the pitch, he’s helped the Seagulls win promotion to the Premier League, been sent off for head butting Patrick van Aanholt in the first 30 minutes of a Brighton-Palace derby, scored some priceless goals and was a deserved winner of Player of the Season for 2018-19.

Off the pitch, he’s managed to have a brief relationship with Katie Price and been a huge contributor to Brighton’s economy as an extremely valued customer of Molly Malone’s and the Grosvenor Casino. I believe the term is ‘Living the dream’.

Left back: Wayne Bridge
It was quite the transfer coup when Wayne Bridge rocked up at the Amex on-loan from Manchester City for the 2012-13 season. The Albion were rumoured to be paying £10,000 of his £40,000 a week wages, which at first appeared an eye watering amount for a Championship club at the time – especially as many fans thought Bridge was coming south for one last payday with little interest in playing.

By the end of the season, that view looked very silly and the money spent looked an absolute bargain – as well as making a mockery of Poyet’s claims that he hadn’t been backed well enough financially to deliver promotion.

Bridge was quite clearly a cut above any other left back in the division in 2012-13. He ended the season in the PFA Team of the Year and chipped in with three high-class goals. His most telling contribution was to keep Wilfried Zaha in his pocket during the St Patrick’s Day massacre at the Amex. And we even got to see the lovely Frankie wearing an Albion shirt on support on occasions. What a wonderful year.

Right wing: Anthony Knockaert
From the moment that Anthony Knockaert rocked up at the Amex in January 2016, we knew we had something special. On his day – and there were plenty of those – he was head and shoulders above any other player in the Championship. Whenever he got the ball, defences would look terrified at the mere prospect of what might be about to happen. And with good reason.

Rarely has a Brighton player ever dominated a division as Knockaert did in 2016-17. He scored 15 times from the wing and ended the season as the Albion’s Player of the Season as well as the PFA Player of the Year for the Championship.

Knockaert didn’t take to the Premier League quite as well as we’d hoped, picking up two petulant red cards as he struggled when things didn’t go his way. There were still memorable moments though, not least that stunning goal to win derby day against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park in March. A brilliant strike from a brilliant player.

Central midfield: Dale Stephens
Signed from Charlton Athletic in January 2014 as Bridcutt’s replacement, Stephens has since gone onto play over 200 times for the Albion. He’s been an automatic pick for Oscar Garcia, Hughton and now Graham Potter. Sami Hyypia never had the opportunity to select Stephens as he spent the first seven months of the 2014-15 season injured, which may go to explain why we were so dire under Hyypia – other than the fact that he was inept, obviously.

Since Potter took over in the summer, Stephens has been playing some of the best football of his career. There have always been Albion fans who perhaps haven’t appreciated quite how good he is, but there’s been no getting away from it so far this season.

Central midfield: Liam Bridcutt
Because of the way that his Albion career ended, there seems to be a bit of revisionism over Bridcutt’s time at the Albion. Yes, he handed in a transfer request to force through a move to Sunderland. But he was still Brighton’s most outstanding player in two of the best seasons the club have ever had.

Bridcutt won Player of the Season in back-to-back years, something that only a couple of other players have achieved. He was consistently voted into the PFA Championship Team of the Year by his peers. At 24, he is one of the youngest players to have captained Brighton in a competitive game. Even when Poyet said Bridcutt could play for Real Madrid, it didn’t seem like over-the-top bluster. That’s how good he looked for the Albion.

Left wing: Vicente
For many Brighton fans, Vicente will always be the most naturally gifted player we’ve ever seen in the stripes. Whenever the Spanish midfielder had the ball, football stopped being sport and became art.

There was the game when he scored twice to single handedly beat Portsmouth. The run against Derby County when he glided effortlessly from the edge of the Albion box, past nine Derby players before smashing the crossbar from 30 yards out. A stunning goal from 35 yards caressed into the top corner on his debut away at Ipswich Town.

People may say that he spent too much time in the treatment room during his two seasons at the Amex, but that kind of ignores the fact that if he hadn’t have been so injury prone, there is no way he’d have ended up playing for Brighton. Real Madrid wanted him for £30m at one point when £30m meant buying world class talent rather than Tyrone Mings.

Watching Vicente was a privilege. It’s very unlikely we’ll see one Brighton player dominate games in the way he did ever again.

Centre Forward: Glenn Murray
Brighton had two promotion winning seasons in the decade and Murray scored over 20 in both of them. Not only that, but in the Albion’s best two campaigns in the Premier League, he was responsible for 36% of Brighton’s goals. No club has ever been so reliant on one man to score since Sky Sports invented football in 1992.

Murray became only the second ever player to net 100 times for Brighton last year, assuring himself of a place alongside Tommy Cook, Peter Ward and Bobby Zamora as one of the great strikers ever to pull on the stripes.

Had he not spent five years away because Gus Poyet inexplicably didn’t rate him enough to agree to a modest pay rise, then he’d be miles clear of Cook and having set a goal scoring record that would probably never be surpassed.

Centre forward: Leonardo Ulloa
For 18 months following Murray’s departure, Brighton had been crying out for a replacement. Poyet finally found one when signing Leonardo Ulloa from Almeria in January 2013. He marked his debut with a goal against Arsenal in the FA Cup, became the first player to score a hat-trick at the Amex a month later and then endeared himself to Albion fans forever more with a brace in the 3-0 St Patrick’s Day demolition of Crystal Palace a month after that.

Ulloa was pretty much the only source of goals in Oscar’s side the following season, scoring 16 times from 38 games. That earned him an £8m move to Leicester City and he went onto help the Foxes lift the Premier League title in 2015-16. Brighton meanwhile tried to replace him with Chris O’Grady in one the most stupid decisions of the decade.

On the substitutes bench…

Sub: David Stockdale
Ah, our old mate Dave. When he wasn’t searching for his own name on Twitter and then getting into arguments with us and Adam Virgo, he could be very good indeed. That ridiculous double save from Fernando Forestieri’s penalty against Sheffield Wednesday at the Amex remains one of the best stops we’ve ever seen.

But he was also good for a spectacular howler every now and then. Scoring two own goals in one game was impressive enough, but to then go and top it a couple of weeks later by letting the ball squirm through his legs from 25 yards to cost us the title was even more remarkable.

By-and-large though, Stockdale gave us two years of excellent service. His first season at the club was a disappointment, but once Ben Roberts was appointed as goalkeeper coach, there was no stopping Dave. He was nearly as important to promotion as Dunk, Knockaert or lenn Murray and the way in which he reacted in the aftermath of the Shoreham Air Disaster was first class.

Stockdale wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but on his day he was still a fine goalkeeper.

Sub: Inigo Calderon
When us Poyet was appointed as Albion boss in November 2009, something became very apparent very quickly to the Uruguayan egomaniac. If Brighton were going to play football his way, then he needed two new full backs who were comfortable on the ball to do it.

As a result, two of his first signings were Marcos Painter on the left from Swansea City and Inigo Calderon on the right. Calderon was a free agent having been released by Spanish third tier side Alaves; hardly the most glamorous of signings, even if the recruitment of a Jesus Christ look-a-like did spark some excitement.

By the time Calderon left the Albion six years later, he was so much more than a doppelganger for the son of God. He’d racked up 231 appearances, scored 19 goals, been crowned Player of the Year at the end of the 2014-15 season and was widely loved by Brighton fans everywhere. The definition of a club legend.

Sub: Gordon Greer
Criminally underrated by certain Brighton fans, Gordo captained the Albion to the League One title and two top six finishes in the Championship. Only two other skippers in Brighton history can touch those achievements – Brian Horton and Bruno. That’s not bad company to be in.

Greer’s signing from Swindon Town in the summer of 2010 for £250,000 proved to be a bargain bit of business. He was instantly installed as skipper by Poyet and was the first true ball playing centre half that many of us had seen, making him crucial to the way we played in the first half of the decade.

Gordo made 234 appearance for the Albion before he was finally usurped in the pecking order by some younger models, leaving in the summer of 2016 after six years of distinguished service. Gordon Strachan once described him as being a rock star, not a footballer and we’re not going to lie – we bloody loved him.

Sub: Pascal Gross
Nobody has assisted more goals for Brighton in the Premier League than Pascal Gross. Only Glenn Murray has scored more. The kids may not like him because he isn’t on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, but there’s no doubt that he has been one of Brighton’s most important players of the past three years.

Sub: Kazenga LuaLua
When Kazenga LuaLua was fit and firing in the early part of the decade, there wasn’t a League One full back he didn’t give nightmares. He was genuinely unplayable in the first half of the 2010-11 campaign whilst on-loan from Newcastle United, scoring some absolute rockets against MK Dons, Bournemouth and Charlton until a broken leg sustained away at Hartlepool ended his season in November.

Poyet paid an undisclosed fee for him in the summer of 2011 which was believed to be just over £1m and although LuaLua remained at the Amex for the next seven years, he never quite lived up the early hype.

Every time he looked like he was getting a run of games under his belt, he’d pick up a niggly little knock. Championship full backs were also less susceptible to his predictable ‘stop, stepover, cut inside’ routine than their lower league colleagues.

LuaLua managed to play 171 times for the Albion, scoring 22 goals. There’ll always be a question of what might have been, however.

Sub: Bobby Zamora
12 years after leaving the Albion, Bobby Zamora returned to Sussex to finish his career with the club where he made his name. It was an injury-hit one season swansong, but we loved every second of it – from the reception he got away at Ipswich Town to the first goal of his second spell in the last minute at Elland Road to his goal in the snow at Blackburn Rovers.

The only thing that could have made Zamora’s return anymore perfect would have been promotion at the end of it. Sadly, the Albion came up just short in that regard.

Sub: Ashley Barnes
The ultimate Marmite footballer. Barnes hit 52 goals in 170 game after arriving from Plymouth Argyle but despite that impressive record, there were sections of the Albion fan base who never really took to the hard-working centre forward.

It was a classic case of not realising what you’ve got until it’s gone. Barnes’ role during his time at the Albion was a strange one, a centre forward who was expected to be a striker when we were on the attack but a left winger when we defended. To make it work, Barnes had to work twice as hard as any other player at times in Gus Poyet’s side, which explains why he was one of Poyet’s favourites.

There were of course moments of controversy. Barnes’ discipline record wasn’t exactly great, most noticeably when he managed to pick up a seven game ban for tripping up referee Nigel Miller during a 1-0 defeat at Bolton Wanderers in 2013.

But by-and-large, Barnes’ time with the Albion was a success. It only took three or four years from his departure for people to realise what he brought to the party and just how important he was.

And last but by no means the least, the man in the dugout…

Manager: Chris Hughton
For our money, Hughton isn’t only the best Brighton manager of the decade – he’s the best Brighton manager ever. In a single summer, he turned the Albion from a side that only escaped relegation to League One because somehow Blackpool, Millwall and Wigan Athletic were worse into one who were just two goals away from automatic promotion to the Premier League.

A year later and Hughton delivered that promotion. He then kept us in the top flight for two consecutive seasons, beating the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United (twice) along the way. As an added bonus, he became only the second ever manager to lead Brighton to an FA Cup Semi Final.

Yes, the football in the final five months of Hughton’s reign deteriorated rapidly and, sadly, he did have to go at the end of last season. But that takes nothing away from the incredible four-and-a-half years that we enjoyed under him. They were the very best times to be a Brighton fan and that was all down to Chris Hughton.