Twenty years ago it looked all over but an unflappable manager, a sparkling French winger and special team spirit have taken them back to the promised land
Two days after an exhausted Brighton had lost to Sheffield Wednesday in last season’s play-off semi-final, the club announced that the manager, Chris Hughton, had signed a new four-year contract. In the afterglow of ostensible failure that sort of thing might have been regarded as inadvisable by some, but not Brighton. Hughton is part of a plan, one that has brought them to the Premier League.
It has been a plan 20 years in the making. Year Zero for Brighton was 1997, when they eked out a draw on the final day of the season against Hereford to stay in the Football League. It was a point that saved them not just from relegation but quite possibly from oblivion, the club having been run into the ground and out of their old home. Over the next two decades the former chairman Dick Knight, followed by the current chairman and benefactor to the tune of nearly £250m Tony Bloom – boyhood fans both – first saved what was then a shell of a club, then oversaw its transition.
Related: Promotion to Premier League is our reward, says Brighton’s Chris Hughton
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