Is there any reason we couldn't do a Brighton?

Geographic location is their only real advantage: proximity to London is important.

Beyond that, I don't think Brighton have found the magic formula. I think there are 12-13 PL clubs who try to do what they do; they're just the ones making the right decisions just now, but no one gets those decisions right forever.

Southampton had finishes of 8th, 7th, 6th, and 8th in consecutive seasons of the last decade, including 2 european campaigns and a league cup final. Brighton have yet to have such a sustained good run, but if Southampton can decline, so can Brighton. Leicester meanwhile achieved even more, but their PL stay will most likely come to an end this weekend.

Before then, I suppose Swansea filled the niche that Brighton do now, and lifted a trophy. I now have to remind myself that they were ever in the PL.

Will Brighton last another 5 seasons in the PL? I'd give it a 60/40, maybe 67/33 chance they will, but that's still a substantial chance they'll go down in that time. Nothing against them; this is just reality for anyone except the 6-8 biggest clubs.
 
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r00fie1 said:
Every so often there appears a "model" club [not Triang - Hornby] held up as the beacon of good management, recruitment, financial prudence, etc.
But down the road they crash and there`s another "perfect" model which takes its place.
I`m thinking of
Swansea City.
Bolton [under Alardyce]
Charlton [Under Curbishley]
Exeter City [Supporters trust and board members]
Brentford.
Brighton.
Southampton.
Middlesbrough*

All at one time or another lorded as beacons: Boro for our English owner.
The rest have been attributed with sound recruitment and selling policies - eg Southampton - until the wheels fell off.
Bolton were ruined by a nob of an owner.
Charlton was taken over by an idiot.
Exeter rose from the ashes on the back of hard work of ordinary fans.
Etc, etc.

I think there are many clubs who dont get the recognition for the hard work of their supporters to keep clubs afloat.

Hey ho!

UTMB

* Its unfair to Boro to suggest we want to "do a Brighton".

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Who wants deck-chairs being thrown about on bank holidays and crowds of Londoners "invading" the town on bank holidays?
Perish the thought!;)
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They just loan that brigade out to Scarborough on bank hols roofie1!
 
Andy_W said:
It's 10x harder for us now.

We're not in the south/ on the south coast, harder to attract players up here unless you have wads of cash (like Newcastle, and like how we used to have compared to other clubs). Probably halves our player options at best.

I think those days are long gone I'm afraid, unless a low wage cap comes in, or FFP actually starts to level the playing field, rather than just trying to stop clubs bankrupting themselves or letting the rich get away with whatever they want.

The system of being able to spend quite big helped us a lot from 1995-2005, but when other clubs started to get a lot more money, it left us in their wake.
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Agree entirely.
Back in the day, Steve Gibson had the financial clout, but today he cant compete with blood money and global owners with billions.
That`s why shrewd recruitment and bringing through our own players is crucial in the short, medium and long term.
Its no good going over old ground, but the future lies in the calibre of our manager [we have close to the best right now] and our recruitment and coaching structure.
We dont give ourselves enough credit for the players we recruit and develop.​
(y)
 
I watched Brighton last night and there were a lot of similarities between what they were doing and what we are trying to do, the biggest difference of course is in the quality of the current crop of players at each club.
With Gibson at the helm and if we can keep Carrick I don't see why we couldn't have another shot at it. We have a better chance of becoming a permanent/semi-permanent fixture in the prem than the two clubs in this weekend's final.
 
billsykes said:
I watched Brighton last night and there were a lot of similarities between what they were doing and what we are trying to do, the biggest difference of course is in the quality of the current crop of players at each club.
With Gibson at the helm and if we can keep Carrick I don't see why we couldn't have another shot at it. We have a better chance of becoming a permanent/semi-permanent fixture in the prem than the two clubs in this weekend's final.
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Dream on we haven't the cash. Luton could be sold to foreign owners and with the right investment could be there for 30 years
 
TheYorkshireTerrier said:
Clubs reach their peaks at different times, as already posted, we ‘done’ a Brighton nearly 20 years ago, and actually we done more than a Brighton.
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totally agree, it's just a cycle like you suggested and how great it was at the time to not only qualify for Europe but also to get to the final of the UEFA Cup. I'm sure that given the right breaks and some sound planning we'll go back up -- all the signs are that we're on the right path.
 
Expat Smoggie said:
totally agree, it's just a cycle like you suggested and how great it was at the time to not only qualify for Europe but also to get to the final of the UEFA Cup. I'm sure that given the right breaks and some sound planning we'll go back up -- all the signs are that we're on the right path.
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Its not cyclical at all, we cant afford to be in that circle of clubs anymore
 
It's just money. Right now there are 10 clubs in the Premier league who would have significantly more income than us if we went up: attendance, matches in Europe, merchandising, marketing, income from owners and prize money.

If we're in the Premier, we have the financial muscle to compete with the other 9 poorest clubs.

Money isn't everything. The likes of Leeds and Everton have shown that you can spend badly while Brighton and Brentford have shown that you can spend well. However, money is a head-start. 25 years ago, there were 5-6 clubs that routinely generated more income than us.

If we get everything right for a period of years in a row, we can aim to break into the top 6. So, yes, we can "do a Brighton" but so can anyone.
 
r00fie1 said:
Agree entirely.
Back in the day, Steve Gibson had the financial clout, but today he cant compete with blood money and global owners with billions.
That`s why shrewd recruitment and bringing through our own players is crucial in the short, medium and long term.
Its no good going over old ground, but the future lies in the calibre of our manager [we have close to the best right now] and our recruitment and coaching structure.
We dont give ourselves enough credit for the players we recruit and develop.​
(y)
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Thing is almost every single club is trying to save money with better recruitment and youth players etc, as nobody could compete with the big boys without doing this, and most would go broke if they tried.

So everyone is basically doing the same thing, but no club can be fully reliant on brilliant recruitment and loads of good enough players coming though, so you do get forced into buying or loaning bigger name/well-known players, and then again you often lose out due to location.

I don't think it's really fixable, not long-term, without a massive wad of cash, more than others have.

A good manager will help, but this can probably only help maybe 10%, you can't polish a turd etc. A 10% change is massive though, and will make a big difference in games with fine margins. The problem is this then gets noticed, and then the manager gets picked up by the manager magic roundabout in the Prem, with managers often moving too early/ quickly.

You have to just hope you get lucky and all the ducks align in the same row, I think for us this means less and less often until a real expenditure cap is brought in, and not one relative to clubs background funding.

I see us as quite a big club, probably top 10-15, but our finances probably knocks us back 5-10 places and our location does the same. This kind of places us bottom end of prem at best, or mid-table champo at worst, with extremely rare occursions out of this.
 
Lottowyn said:
I think you could call Brighton a big club. After all, just be being a Premier League club, you are apparently listed as one of the world’s top clubs. Perhaps this is only because of TV money, but it is a fact.
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Then we definitely are if Brighton are.
 
Andy_W said:
I see us as quite a big club, probably top 10-15, but our finances probably knocks us back 5-10 places and our location does the same. This kind of places us bottom end of prem at best, or mid-table champo at worst, with extremely rare occursions out of this.
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I think probably, if you factor out the broadcast rights by assuming everyone is in the Premier league, we are in group where we would be slightly richer than Wolves but poorer than, say, Sunderland. If you look at clubs like Leicester, we would have a slightly higher income potential than them. At any time, some teams are over-performing and some under-performing. We are definitely a club that would need to over-perform just to stay mid-table and we would be at risk of relegation from a single bad season.

We have under-performed for most seasons since we got relegated under Southgate and that is definitely a marker of a poorly run club. Hopefully that's changing. If we were performing to our average we would probably be spending 2 years in the Prem for every one in the Champ.
 
Bruce said:
I think probably, if you factor out the broadcast rights by assuming everyone is in the Premier league, we are in group where we would be slightly richer than Wolves but poorer than, say, Sunderland. If you look at clubs like Leicester, we would have a slightly higher income potential than them. At any time, some teams are over-performing and some under-performing. We are definitely a club that would need to over-perform just to stay mid-table and we would be at risk of relegation from a single bad season.

We have under-performed for most seasons since we got relegated under Southgate and that is definitely a marker of a poorly run club. Hopefully that's changing. If we were performing to our average we would probably be spending 2 years in the Prem for every one in the Champ.
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Yeah, I would have us as slightly bigger than Wolves and Leicester, but not Sunderland. But Leicester and Wolves much better locations and maybe Sunderland should have an easier time attracting players from being near Newcastle than we would, being near nowhere etc. Sunderland and Newcastle still at a location disadvantage compared to southern clubs though.

Overall, I would say all three should have an easier job than we do, if averaged out over 20 years.

Leicester certainly over-performed and hit the jackpot with a few good players recruited at the same time, pretty lucky and they held it for a while, but the luck has run out now. They managed to keep some decent players, but a short period of underperforming as killed them.

I think Wolves are over-performing for their squad, and think they could be in big trouble next year.

I'm not sure we underperformed, as we were still paying big bills which we couldn't continue to afford, maybe this was the reason why we didn't spend in the prem, but we missed out on a hell of a lot of players, probably due to location I think.
We shouldn't have sacked Southgate and replacing him with Strachan was ludicrous, bad manager and bad recruitment. Mowbray had to recover from Strachan and was doing ok all things considered, but Karanka coming in was a good fit for our team and he did well with us being more suited to a defensive style. We didn't spend under Karanka in the prem, and missed out on a lot of players, probably due to not being able to pay them what they want, or to convince them to come up north and play for a defensive side. We then strangely took a financial punt with monk, which was ok as we brought some decent players in, but the manager wasn't good enough to get a tune out of them. Then after this we were on a recovery job from that mess which has taken years to fix, and we've gone through too many managers and styles.

Things seem to be lining up better now, decent squad, decent manager, decent attendances and we shouldn't be broke, as we've not really had a financial blow out for a long while. Our chance now is probably better than it's been since Southgate, with regards to if we can get up it should be a bit simpler to get players in. Karanka did well getting us up, but I can't imagine many attacking players were all that interested in playing that defensive way, so it was always going to be a very limited push.
 
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