Vote for your Brighton Team of the Decade: Manager

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.

Manager

Given that Brighton had climbed from the League One relegation zone to the Premier League over the course of the 2010s, it’s fair to say that we’ve been blessed with some seriously good managers.

In fact, of the five permanent bosses to have led the Albion over the past 10 years, only two have left with the club in a lower league position than when they arrived. And the two position drop suffered under Oscar Garcia should actually be considered one of the biggest successes of the decade given the squad that Oscar had to work with.

Our final vote for the WAB Team of the Decade is your chance to recognise Brighton’s best manager.

Gus Poyet
Tony Bloom and the Albion may be so determined to burn their bridges with Gus Poyet that they won’t even mention his name, but there is no doubting his significant role in turning Brighton from League One laughing stock to a club capable of pushing for the Premier League.

He delivered one of the best seasons that we’ll ever witness when Glenn Murray, Elliott Bennett, Inigo Calderon and co romped to the League One title. He then led the Albion to fourth place in the Championship, the clubs highest finishing position for 30 years. And all of that was done while playing passing football that was unlike anything we’d even seen before.

Poyet gave Brighton a identity and put us back on the footballing map on the pitch. It may have all ended in acrimony which has led to a lot of revisionism – and it’s undeniable that he was a bit of a prick – but he still deserves to be considered one of the best bosses that the Albion have ever had.

Oscar Garcia
Following in Poyet’s footsteps was always likely to be a difficult job, let alone when the club decided that they expected Premier League football to be delivered while cutting costs. It says much about Oscar Garcia’s managerial ability that he managed to sneak a play off spot in the 2013-14 season despite having a squad that on paper should have been upper mid table at best.

A side with Keith Andrews, Jake Forster-Caskey and Rohan Ince as its first choice midfield finished sixth in the Championship. That makes Oscar one of the most underrated managers in Brighton history – and it was little surprise that he decided to resign when he realised that he would be expected to better those achievements with an even more threadbare squad the next season.

He was also a bloody nice man. Viva Oscar Garcia.

Sami Hyypia
Sami Hyypia was shit. There is no other way to put it. Tactically inept, his full-backs-playing-as-wingers-formation looked like it had been dreamt up by a man on crack.

But – and there is a but – he wasn’t helped by the players at his disposal. Oscar finishing sixth convinced the Albion they could further cut the playing budget and still compete, and so you had the fatal cocktail of a manager who was out of his depth mixed with a squad made up of signings such as Joe Bennett, Aaron Hughes, Gary Gardner and Greg Halford. Nothing summed it up more than replacing future Premier League winner Leonardo Ulloa with Chris O’Grady.

It probably says much about the tools given to Hyypia that even a manager as talented as Chris Hughton struggled to keep the club in the Championship. Hyypia was a terrible appointment, but one we expect a few of you will want to vote for so he makes the shortlist anyway.

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.

Graham Potter
It’s early days for Graham Potter and while results haven’t improved – Brighton are actually enduring their worst Premier League season so far in terms of points at the halfway stage in case you hadn’t heard – performances definitely have.

What Potter is trying to do in overhauling a team’s style of player in such a short space of time in the pressure cooker that is the top flight is brave. Bloom seems to have decided it’s working by offering his manager a new five-and-a-half-year deal after just four Premier League wins.

A risky move given relegation remains a very real possibility, but who are we to judge Bloom’s judgement? After all, every appointment he’s made this decade has been spot on bar one.

Which makes picking a manager for our WAB Team of the Decade a difficult task.

Please vote for one manager for our Brighton Team of the Decade