Vote for your Brighton Team of the Decade: Centre Forward

December 23, 2019December 23, 2019 WeAreBrighton.com 0 Comments

In case you hadn’t heard or realised, the 2010’s are coming to an end. It’s been quite the decade for Brighton and Hove Albion with the Amex Stadium opening, two promotions and the realisation of the dream of Premier League football.

All of that success has been delivered by some excellent footballers. To recognise that fact, we’re putting together a Brighton Team of the Decade made up players selected by your votes. They’ll be lining up in the 4-4-2 of Chris Hughton’s Championship promotion season and the full team will be revealed before the clock strikes midnight to reign in the 2020’s.

Centre Forward

“We need to sign a new striker”. How many times have we heard that over the course of the past 10 years? Each and every time a transfer window rolls around, top of the Albion supporter’s wish list is a new centre forward, and preferably one of these mythical 20-goal-a-season men.

Given how desperate we’ve been to sign a new striker, you could be forgiven that it’s been donkey after donkey who has filled the centre forward role for the Albion. In actual fact, we’ve had some very good players up top this decade. Glenn Murray and Ashley Barnes both passed the 20 goal mark, Murray on two occasions. Leonardo Ulloa would surely have done so too had injury not interfered in his one full season at the Amex.

They are the headline acts but there have bee plenty of notable individuals in the supporting cast. Everybody loves to recall the likes of Billy Paynter, Leon Best and Jurgen Locadia, but for every rubbish striker there has been one who was equally effective.

Which, just like for our central midfielder poll, should make this a hotly contested vote. There are two spots up for grabs, so who have been your best Brighton strikers of the 2010s?

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.

For us, he isn’t just Brighton’s best centre forward of the decade. He’s been Brighton’s Player of the Decade.

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.

Chris Wood
It’s little wonder that the Albion romped to the League One title when Poyet could call upon a front three of Murray, Barnes and Chris Wood – who would all go onto become established Premier League strikers. Wood was only 18 when he rocked up at Withdean on-loan from West Bromwich Albion, but it became very apparent very quickly that he was a serious talent.

Nine goals in 31 appearances followed over the course of the 2010-11 season, despite which Poyet never tried too hard to get him back. Which was a shame as he’s gone onto score against us for Birmingham City, Bristol City, Millwall, The Leeds United and Burnley.

Craig Mackail-Smith
Mackail-Smith was Brighton’s record buy at a cost of £2.5m in the summer of 2011, but even then there was a nagging doubt about whether this would prove to be money well spent. Mackail-Smith’s goal-laden spell at Peterborough United had been fuelled by balls down the channels for him to run onto. The Posh under Darren Ferguson played in a way that was perfectly suited to getting the best out of him.

Brighton didn’t. Poyet’s Albion thrived with a target man up top, which is why Murray had such a productive 2010-11 season. If Mackail-Smith was to thrive, then Poyet would need to change the way his side was set up. He didn’t do that and as a result, Mackail-Smith’s time at the Amex was average at best.

He wasn’t helped by a ruptured Achilles tendon which ruled him out for 13 months midway through his most productive campaign in 2012-13. Mackail-Smith’s finished with an Albion career record of 24 goals from 122 appearances.

Leonardo Ulloa
For 18 months, Brighton had been crying out for a Murray 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 Garcia’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.

Sam Baldock
It took Sam Baldock a bit of time to get going at the Albion following his £2.5m move from Bristol City in 2014. In his first season at the Amex, he scored just four times before a serious injury brought a premature end to his campaign in March.

Chris Hughton’s decision to switch to a 4-4-2 formation for 2015-16 finally unlocked Baldock’s potential. He only scored four times again that year, but his work rate off the ball and the number of chances he fashioned as a second striker for his partner Tomer Hemed proved to be vital to helping Hughton’s side finish third in the table.

The promotion winning campaign of 2016-17 proved to be Baldock’s most productive as he scored 12 times despite again missing a large chunk of the year. He was also ruled out for the first half of the Albion’s debut Premier League season and as a result, he only managed 45 minutes of top flight football before being sold to Reading in the summer of 2018.

Tomer Hemed
Just like Baldock, Hemed was another vital component of the Albion’s success in the Championship who didn’t perhaps get the opportunities he deserved in the Premier League. Hemed was top scorer in the 2015-16 campaign with 17 goals. He followed that up with 14 in 2016-17 despite having been usurped by Murray as Hughton’s first choice target man.

That gave Hemed decent career figures of 38 goals from 108 games. For bonus points, he was also married to a former Miss Israel who had a very pleasing Instagram feed.

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 last ever professional 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.

Neal Maupay
It’s probably too soon for Neal Maupay to be considered one of Brighton’s best players of the decade, but he’s such a wonderful, terrible bastard that he’s on the shortlist anyway.

Since signing from Brentford for a club-record £20m in the summer, he’s scored some vital goals and celebrated them like a first-class wind up merchant – most enjoyably away at Crystal Palace where at least six Palace fans appeared as though they were going to explode with rage.