Andy Petterson – the loan ranger

Despite it not being a particularly long list of names, Andy Petterson is probably not the first Australian who played for the Albion that supporters would think of. Partly because he was part of a run of defeats which most fans would to choose to forget.

He first arrived from Australia in 1988 as a teenager to join Luton Town but played just 19 games for the Hatters in five years. During that time he was loaned to Ipswich Town in 1993 after they had an injury to their first choice ‘keeper Craig Forrest. A spell that saw Petterson make his Premier League debut on the last day of the season in a 2-1 win against Nottingham Forest.

Having not played for the club in his spell there yet, he only found out 45 minutes before the game that he was due to make his debut. And far from being an end of season dead rubber, this was a game which Ipswich needed to win to avoid relegation.

Petterson admitted “I’m driving to the game and I’m late… I dash into the dressing room and before I could even put my bag down, I was told number two keeper Clive Baker was out sick. And I’m starting… So I run out and obviously I’m very nervous to start.”

A year later he made a move to Charlton where he initially continued his life as back up, with his first 2 seasons involving four separate loan spells, including another loan spell at Ipswich.

But on New Year’s Day 1997 he was brought into the side, kept his place and went onto impress so much that he won the club’s player of the season award as they finished a disappointing 15th in the First Division.

As a result, for the first time in his career he began the following 1997/98 season as his club’s number one goalkeeper. All seemed well as the team pushed for promotion to the topflight. But he soon lost his place in the team in February of that season and had to watch from the bench as Charlton won that iconic playoff final on penalties against Sunderland after the game ended 4-4 after extra time.

He would later admit: “although we got promotion, that day at Wembley wasn’t quite as special for me as if I had played in the game. At the time when Sasa saved the penalty we had just won at Wembley in such dramatic fashion and it was fantastic for me. But a few days later it sort of sank in that I missed another opportunity to play at Wembley, like when I was at Luton and we got to an FA Cup semi-final that was played at Wembley.”

After featuring just twice for Charlton in the topflight, both of which games they won, he was soon demoted to third choice keeper and loaned to First Division Portsmouth. But injuries to Sasa Ilic and Simon Royce saw him return for another run in the team. However, at the end of the 1998/99 season he was let go and returned to Portsmouth who offered him a permanent deal.

Despite not being a regular under him, Petterson has mostly good things to say about his Charlton manager, the former Albion player Alan Curbishley. “He was a really good coach and a really good guy who treated players really well and he wasn’t like other managers who come across as being a bit of a bully sort of thing.”

Despite his issues there, the five seasons he spent at Charlton would end up being his most successful spell in football. At Portsmouth he started as first choice but by November he’d lost his place in the team and admitted later: “The loan spell [at Portsmouth] went well. The permanent move didn’t, unfortunately. It was the beginning of the end when I went back to Pompey. My career never really recovered.”

Petterson had lost his place in the Portsmouth team, in part after a row with assistant coach Kevin Bond. And after loan spells at Torquay and Wolves, he left for West Brom on a free transfer, where once again, he was surplus to requirements.

However, he would make a comeback by signing for Brighton in August 2002 on another free transfer when Albion’s number one keeper Michel Kuipers suffered his first of a number of injuries that season.

But it was another false dawn for the Australian, as he played only nine times for the Seagulls. Which included playing in six of the club’s run of record equalling 12 consecutive defeats. And things began as they meant to go on for Petterson, when on his debut he was at fault for Walsall’s first goal as the team lost 2-0.

He was not initially perturbed and still seemed to be relishing his opportunity with the Albion, with the next game seeing him face his old club Portsmouth. By then he was an old hand in the English game and with his new team struggling with the step up to the second tier, he felt he could make a difference in that area, telling the Argus before the match: “I would like to think I could help some of the younger lads build in confidence.”.

However, he let in a further four against the league leaders as Albion lost an entertaining game 4-2, and conceded a total of 15 goals in his 7 league appearances for the club, with all bar one ending in defeat.

That included another 4-2 defeat, this time at home to Gillingham. With the game still in the balance at 3-2 and Albion pressing for an equaliser, a quick Gillingham counter saw Petterson experience probably the nadir of his spell at Albion. As the Australian fell over his own leg whilst rushing back to his goal, it left Gillingham’s Kevin James to put the ball into an empty net.

Further defeats to Stoke and Rotherham followed before Michel Kuipers returned from injury to save Petterson the ignominy of any involvement in Albion’s further five defeats, which included a 5-0 defeat away to rivals Palace.

He did have one final involvement as a late substitute in Albion’s record avoiding win away to Bradford, after Michel Kuipers had been sent off. But his first job was to pick the ball out of the net after Andy Gray had blasted in the resultant spot-kick to set up a tense finale. Thankfully, Brighton held on for a long awaited win.

Petterson made two more appearance as an unused substitute at Albion before he was let go to continue his nomadic career in the lower reaches of the English Football League.

He next signed a short-term contract with Bournemouth, before spells with Rushden and Diamonds, Southend, Walsall and Notts County, during which time he made only a smattering of appearances.

Petterson admitted after retiring that “[I] maybe mentally didn’t have the belief in myself enough. I’m a bit of a laid-back, casual sort of guy. Sometimes you have to be that pushy arrogant sort of person for the coach to take notice of you a bit more. I tried to do it, as a footballer you have to be a bit of an actor, but it just wasn’t in my nature.”

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Twenty things from twenty seasons (part 1)

According to the World Health Organization, twenty years equates to around a fifth of the average life expectancy in the UK. It is also a period of time that equates to around a sixth of the history of Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club.

So on reaching the culmination of the twentieth season since I decided to start following the Albion, and as the club approaches the twenty year anniversary of moving back to Brighton and making Withdean Stadium its temporary home, it feels like a good time to reflect. So here’s a few memories from times gone by.

1999/20 – You never forget your first game. But by 1999, I’d already been a football goer for a few years, having been sporadically taken to Arsenal and England games by my parents. But it wasn’t until Saturday 6th November 1999 when I first experienced the Albion live. A day which saw an unspectacular 1-0 win over Hartlepool at Withdean Stadium.

I remember little of the games aside from Jamie Campbell’s headed goal and the subsequent firework that followed. Something that became a regular celebration of Albion goals at Withdean for the majority of the club’s time there.

It was a game Albion Manager Micky Adams described as having a “dead” atmosphere. No wonder really considering the quality of the match and the fact it was such an incredibly cold day. I still remember my brothers’ complaints ringing in our ears, so if you’d told him then that we’d be regularly frequenting this place for the next twelve years I expect his response would have been far from friendly.

Yes, the Withdean wasn’t a place to be when the weather wasn’t on your side, with no protection from the elements. And on this day the wind swept through the newly upgraded converted athletic stadium with a fierce harshness. But nonetheless this was a place we would grow to begrudgingly love over the coming years.

2000/01 – The next season a man arrived at the club who for a while defined my love for it. And when Bobby Zamora signed for the Albion from Bristol Rovers for £100k I think the majority of fans thought we’d go on to win the league. So much so that on the first day of the season away at Southend the Albion away end sung chants of ‘Championes’ before the game, only for the team to embarrassingly then lose 2-0.

But nonetheless the team did win the league with Zamora the league’s top scorer on 28. We all know the rest, those three seasons with the club go down as one of my favourite periods over these two decades. A period that began and ended with the transfer of Bobby Zamora.

2001/02 – In the third season at the Withdean it got even better for the Albion. The team continued their supremacy and marched on to a second consecutive title and promotion. With a little help from that man Bobby Zamora, who once again top scored with 28.

Even the departure of manager Micky Adams couldn’t derail the Albion’s journey onwards and upwards. After he left for Leicester City, Peter Taylor moved in the opposite direction and got the team over the line. But, he then left in the summer after realising the club’s plans for a new stadium and the financial resources available to strengthen the team, weren’t quite what he’d been hoping for.

But for me the moment of the season was that Swindon game at home. The worst 0-0 you’ll ever see, but a result that secured yet another championship title. There’s nothing like seeing your team win a title but seeing them do it two seasons in a row is particularly special.

The club had won two titles winning promotions in my first three seasons as an Albion fan, but what I was soon to find out was that there would be just as many ups as there would be downs.

2002/03 – And inevitably after such a sharp jump up the leagues, the following season was one of those downs. Whilst the season started brightly with four points from the first two games, a run of 12 straight defeats followed and the writing was on the wall for the Albion.

But after Steve Coppell was brought in to replace the hopelessly out of his depth Martin Hinshlewood as manager the team put up a great fight and almost survived. At one point remarkably lifting themselves out of the relegation zone.

And a game that summed up this fight was a 2-2 draw at home to Burnley. The club’s had met on the first day of the season a day which saw a 3-1 win for Brighton at Turf More, a win that had preceded that losing run. And when the clubs met again in the December of that season there would be more Albion celebrations.

But first the Albion once again found themselves behind. Burnley were dominant in the first half and finally took a deserved lead through Glen Little. Then after many chances came and went and with less than twenty minutes to go, Burnley first goalscorer Little found Ian Moore with a cross who doubled the Clarets lead.

I like many Albion fans had seen this story too many times before that season and assumed that was that. I was close to giving up and leaving when unthinkably the Albion mounted a comeback through a 20-year-old young rookie on loan from Arsenal named Steve Sidwell.

And it was that man Zamora who was to turn provider this time. First, he found Sidwell with a cross who pulled the deficit back to one with three minutes left on the clock. Then the duo combined again for Sidwell to equalise and cue bedlam in the rickety South Stand in the Withdean rain.

It wasn’t just that the Albion had got a result by scoring two late goals, but also that it was done so despite being second best for long periods. But after a successful spell on loan Chairman Dick Knight made a futile attempt to sign him when Steve Sidwell’s loan soon ended. But instead Sidwell went to Reading where he was later a key player as the club achieved promotion to the topflight. The Albion’s main marksman Zamora would also leave at the end of the season for topflight Tottenham. I wonder what that side could have gone on to achieve if it had held the same pulling power that the club does now to enable it to hold onto its best players.

2003/04 – So a new season brought a new dawn for Brighton back in the third tier. As following the resignation of manager Steve Coppell who left in the September of that season to join Steve Sidwell at Reading, there was another new manager in the shape of Mark McGhee.

Whilst Coppell didn’t save Albion from relegation, he had at least ensured there was a fight and that the Albion were ultimately only relegated on the final day of that season.

When McGhee came in, he built on the organisation and experience that Coppell had instilled, constructing a solid defence-minded team that conceded only 43 goals in 46 games, the third best in the league that season. McGhee also added a much-needed injection of Scottish Charisma to post-match interviews, something Steve Coppell’s dry monotone nature lacked.

And it was McGhee’s charisma and wit that pushed the Albion over the line into a playoff place for promotion back to the second tier at the first time of asking.

After being drawn against Swindon in the playoff semi-final and winning the first leg 1-0, the Albion were poor in the return home leg. After going 2-0 down in extra time they needed a late goal from defender Adam Virgo to take the game to a penalty shootout, which they won to get to the final.

That Virgo equaliser still goes down as a favourite Albion goal of mine. We thought we were beaten; some fans had already begun to leave, and it really was the last throw of the dice to get as many players forward as we could and launch the ball into the box. The scenes when he scored and then when we won the shootout were like little seen at the Withdean.

Then came the final, one of the great Brighton and Hove Albion days as nearly 30,000 Albion fans descending on the Welsh capital of Cardiff, a following about four times larger than the average attendances the club were getting at the time at Withdean.

Ultimately, we won the game when we were given a penalty through a foul on Chris Iwelumo and as soon as he won it, there was little doubt that Leon Knight would put it away. 1-0 Albion and that’s how it ended.

But the build up to the game, in fact the season as a whole, had been dominated by the campaign to get planning permission to build our new stadium at Falmer from the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Most notably the postcards saying: “We’re pleased to be here (with a picture of the Cardiff Millennium Stadium), but we wish we were here (with a picture of the design for the new stadium)” the club gave out with the playoff final tickets and that fans were encouraged to send to John Prescott’s office.

At that time, it was always a balance between fighting for the new stadium and focusing on matters on the pitch, and the requirement to fund the continued legal battle was stretching resources at the club. Former manager Steve Coppell said during his time as manager whilst the club struggled against relegation: “The football has almost been a sideshow. If that money had been spent on the pitch, we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this position.” But this was to continue for some time yet.

2004/05 – Given that the planning permission battle was to run on for a few more seasons, the fact the club avoided relegation from the second tier for the only time during the Withdean era is a testament to the good work Mark McGhee was doing at the club.

His style wasn’t to everyone’s taste though and would eventually be his downfall a couple of years later. One of the best examples of his approach was the switch of Adam Virgo from Centre Back to Striker to play him as a target man, eventually becoming the club’s top scorer that season.

I remember the surprise when I first saw that he was playing up front. Like most I first thought it was bizarre, but this exemplified the makeshift nature at the club that McGhee had to work with at the time.

This was first tried in what was a notable 1-0 win for the Seagulls away to recently relegated from the topflight Leicester City, who were incidentally managed by former and also future Albion manager Micky Adams.

And it was just as bizarre of a winner as the Leicester defence’s failed offside trap left Virgo with so much room, he had plenty of time to set himself and slot the ball home past former England goalie Ian Walker.

And he wasn’t the only former England international on show for Leicester as up the other end Dion Dublin wasted a few opportunities to peg back the seagulls. In fact, this was a Leicester team full of players with plenty of topflight experience and the three points were a real coup for the Albion.

Virgo admitted the forward role wasn’t one he relished saying after the Leicester win: “I wouldn’t say I am enjoying playing up front. There is a lot of running involved” and McGhee was clear that it wasn’t in his long-term plan saying: “Adam is a better centre half than centre forward or right-back and eventually he will be a terrific centre half for us.”

But Virgo never really did get the chance to do that. He played most of that season as a make-shift target man, top scoring with eight. In doing so he caught the eye of Celtic manager and former teammate of McGhee, Gordon Strachan, who signed Virgo for £1.5m. A deal Dick Knight described as “the best deal I ever did”.

Things didn’t work out though for Virgo at Celtic as personal issues and broken promises counted against him. After a knee injury during a loan spell at Coventry he found himself back at Brighton in 2008. When despite being a fairly regular face in the team over those next two seasons, he never looked like the potentially great centre back he had under McGhee pre-injury. And when his contract ran out, he left the club in 2010, subsequently ending his playing days with spells at Yeovil and Bristol Rovers.

2005/06 – The following season Brighton couldn’t repeat the feat of survival again, ultimately succumbing to relegation as the bottom placed team sitting a whopping 12 points from safety. Whilst the club had made a huge financial gain on the sale of Virgo, much of that money went into keeping the club and its fight for a new stadium afloat and as such the on-pitch matters suffered.

But there were still some high points. In particular when Albion won a meeting between themselves and rivals Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park 1-0 through a Paul McShane header. A win that to a degree dispelled the ghosts of the 5-0 defeat there that bookended the 12-game losing run in 2002.

Brighton were favoured by the fact that hat-trick hero of that day back in 2002 for Palace Andy Johnson started on the bench due to injury. But it was Albion’s strike-force which looked like it was missing something as an out of form Leon Knight and a young Jake Robinson spurned a number of chances until McShane became the unlikely goalscoring hero to earn Albion a morale boosting victory.

But later that season Palace came to our place and got a late winner through Jobi McAnuff and beat the Albion 3-2 to even the score. It just seemed like they always got the better of us and always had the last say. How things change.

2006/07 – So with the club back in the third tier and with everyone still stinging from the horrors that they saw over the previous season; Mark McGhee was sacked in September only a handful of games into the season.

In his place came former club captain and more recently Youth team coach, Dean Wilkins. Once in charge he put his focus almost entirely on developing the young players at the club. But unfortunately, as Dick Knight says in his autobiography: “a good coach doesn’t necessarily make a good manager.”

The first season he had in charge was far from a success as the Seagulls finished only six points and three places above the relegation zone.

But as always in the darkness, there is still light. And that came with a humongous 8-0 win over Northwich Victoria in the FA Cup first round that was played in front of just four and a half thousand dedicated souls at the Withdean Stadium. With Brighton 2-0 up at half time the Conference side crumbled as they went on to concede six second half goals.

This was a win that would end up being Brighton’s equal third highest winning margin in its history. A margin that is only beaten by a nine-goal winning margin over Wisbech Town in the FA Cup first round in 1965 and a twelve-goal winning margin over Brighton Amateurs in the FA Cup first qualifying round in 1902.

Jake Robinson scored a hat trick, Dean Cox scored a brace and there were also goals for Alex Revell, Sam Rents and Joe Gatting. Notably, Alex Revell was the only one of the five goalscorers that wasn’t a product of Dean Wilkins work with the youth team.

In fact, one of those youth products Jake Robinson is a man associated with another Albion record as being the youngest ever goalscorer for the club, a feat he achieved three years earlier against Forest Green in the Football League trophy.

But Dean Wilkins partiality towards his youth team products went far beyond that of a run out for a highly rated sixteen-year-old in a neglected and low priority cup competition. The scorers that day were a sign of the work Wilkins did whilst manager that was at times foolhardy. Dick Knight admitted in his autobiography that a number of potential signings were turned down by Wilkins whilst others that did materialise, like a young Glenn Murray, would often be used as bit part players to make room for Wilkins youth team players.

Whilst his overall vision of a team fill of Sussex born players leading Albion out at the AMEX was a noble one, it almost certainly could not have been achieved whilst gaining Brighton promotion back to the second tier as Poyet would achieve four years later.

2007/08 – The following season saw a significant upturn in fortunes as the team finished 7th and were ultimately unfortunate to just miss out on a playoff place to Leeds United. This was all-but confirmed the night before a trip to Bristol Rovers for Albion’s last away game of the season. Nonetheless they took a good away support with Wilkins referencing this saying: “It is the best in the division by an absolute mile… After Leeds won on Friday it looks like we have missed out on the play-offs, so the amount of fans turning out here today was quite phenomenal.”

I remember it being an unusually sunny day for a football match and I ended up with a quite rosy-red sunburnt shade to my facial skin-tone due to the uncovered away end. I’m not a regular at away games, mainly due to a general laziness when it comes to committing to the long journeys involved. But on this occasion living a 10-minute walk down the road from Bristol Rovers’ Memorial Ground it wasn’t as huge of a commitment as usual.

And it was a game the travelling support who had made the journey from Sussex wouldn’t regret doing so, as goals from Ian Westlake and Glenn Murray earned Brighton a 2-0 win.

The game was advertised as the last game at the Memorial Ground for Bristol Rovers, but we returned their next season after redevelopment of the ground was delayed and then later scrapped altogether. They still play there to this day.

It’s been a while since Rovers started talking of moving stadium and have since lost significant ground to city neighbours Bristol City who’ve redeveloped their previously run-down Ashton Gate stadium into a modern stadium fit for the purpose of topflight football. Rovers story is one that really makes you appreciate the AMEX.

That day in 2008 turned out to be Wilkins last away game in charge of the Albion as he was demoted back to a first team coach over the summer. In his autobiography Chairman Dick Knight admitted that he’d “lost confidence in Dean Wilkins abilities as a manager.”

2008/09 – So the summer of 2008 then saw another new manager, this time it was the return of the man who built the team that I had initially fallen in love with back in 1999, Micky Adams. As a result, the excitement and optimism at the club seemed to be on its way back. And it was enough for me and my brother to get season tickets again, which considering I was still living in Bristol made it quite a personal commitment, but Micky was worth it.

However, despite a decent start repeated home defeats followed. One home game that remarkably didn’t end in defeat was the visit of Premier League Man City in the League Cup. Unlike now the visit of a topflight team was a real novelty but living and working in Bristol meant evening games were a no-go for me and I had to settle for watching Sky Sports News for score updates.

So I was left jumping around my living room amongst my slightly bemused housemates as the winning penalty went in that gave Albion a victory at the end of an engrossing 2-2 draw. It’s a shame that the team were otherwise so dreadful that season. The return of Micky Adams didn’t work out at all, but as well as this moment of glory there was also the run to the semi-finals of the Football League Trophy, where the Albion were a penalty shootout away from a final at Wembley, but it was not to be.

Not long after that game Micky Adams was sacked, and Russel Slade came in as his replacement. The change was needed, the team looked hopeless and doomed to face relegation under Adams towards the end of his reign with him stood seemingly helpless on the sidelines.

However, under Slade’s leadership the Albion did stay up on the final day of the season thanks to a 1-0 win over Stockport that bookended a truly great escape from relegation by the team.

In doing so they had managed to avoid falling into the football league’s bottom tier, which considering we were now two years from the opening of the AMEX, feels like a pivotal moment in the club’s recent history.

To read part two click here

The Welsh Wizard – Nathan Jones

Nathan Jones time playing with the Albion will be best remembered by many for the trickery and skilfulness that made him a cult figure on the Sky Sports program Soccer AM, but to just remember him for that would be unfair. Signed by manager Micky Adams in the summer 2000, he was a key part of the team that won back to back championship winning promotions, and after the subsequent relegation he was then part of the team that won the playoff final in 2004 to win its third promotion in four years. In fact it was the end of an eventful nine-year period for Jones.

After growing up in the Rhondda in rural Wales, he started out with Welsh club Merthyr Tydfil playing non-league football. It wasn’t long though before he went professional signing for the team he now manages, Luton Town. He spent a year there, but after failing to break into the first team he moved onto sunnier climates in Spain, where he was able to utilise his Spanish A-level.

He initially playing for Segunda División side Badajoz during the 1995/96 season as they missed out on promotion to La Liga, the next season he stepped down a division to play for Numancia where he won promotion back to the Segunda División. He later returned to the UK signing for Southend, in a three-year spell that included a loan spell at Scarborough in his second season. Despite that he still accumulated 99 appearances for the shrimpers, winning player of the season in his final season.

Therefore when he moved to the Albion in the summer of 2000 it was a major coup for then manager Adams. He quickly became an integral part of a team that is fondly remembered by many supporters of the club. Jones showed versatility at the club playing initially as a left winger and later also as a left back, a versatility that helped him keep his place in the team. In the back to back title winning promotion seasons Jones was a regular playing 76 times scoring 6 goals. After promotion to Division One, he found game time harder to come by starting only 16 games, with Paul Brooker battling him for the left winger role, whilst Kerry Mayo had a great season at left back.

After relegation back to the third tier and with Brooker leaving to join Micky Adams at Leicester, Jones was once again a key part of the team that won promotion via the playoffs, with the team winning its third promotion in four years. And with the playoff final in his home country’s capital Cardiff it was a nice way for him to cap off an eventful few years with the Albion. In the build up to the playoff final Jones said of his time to date with the Albion: “The emotions have been up and down over the past few years, but coming to Brighton is one of the best things I ever did – it’s a fantastic club”.

Following promotion and with the team reinforced with new signings, Jones once again struggled to get game time at the higher level, starting just three times. Whilst the Albion reached its highest finish during its time at the Withdean of 20th in the Championship, Jones was ultimately deemed surplus to requirements. At the end of the 2004/05 season Jones was not offered a new deal and with the good wishes of everyone at the club he moved to Yeovil, where he spent seven years first as player and later as a coach.

After being brought in initially just as a player, in 2008 he began his move into coaching by combing his playing duties with becoming first team coach of Yeovil women’s senior team under manager Steve Phelps and assistant manager Nigel Wolfe.

Whilst many Yeovil fans will remember the highlight of his time at the club when he captained the club at Wembley when they lost the 2007 playoff final, for many Brighton fans they will remember a number of games he played in for Yeovil against the Albion.

One such game against the Albion was during Micky Adams doomed second spell at the club, where The sides drew 1-1 on a sunny day at Huish Park. It was so sunny, when I finally arrived home I resembled a tomato shade of red. Despite leaving on good terms Jones received a lot of stick from the travelling Albion fans, which only got worse after the events that would follow. The game saw debutant Joe Anyinsah sent off for two yellow cards, the second yellow was for a high-footed kick on Jones, which manager Adams didn’t take kindly to as his post-match interview shows.

Later that season after manager Russel Slade left Yeovil (who following the sacking of Micky Adams would later take the Albion job), Jones became Player-Assistant manager of Yeovil men’s senior team under player-manager Terry Skiverton. Later that season, Brighton met Yeovil again, this time beating them 5-0, in a defeat branded by Jones as “embarrassing”. With former Yeovil manager Russel Slade having by now replaced Adams as manager, the Albion were on their way to a remarkable escape from relegation and along the way gave Jones a footballing lesson to take forward.

After a few years of consolidation in League One, Skiverton was sacked with Yeovil in the relegation zone and Gary Johnson appointed manager. Subsequently Jones was demoted from assistant to first team coach and following this he only stayed on until the end of the season.

After only a matter of weeks since leaving Yeovil, he started a new coaching job as u-21 team coach at Charlton. But after only a year there he moved on again to take a job as first team coach at the Albion, returning after 8 years away. He first worked under then manager, Spaniard Oscar Garcia, once again utilising his A-level in Spanish. When he left at the end of the season Jones was kept on to work under newly appointed manager Sami Hyypia, in what was a short-lived and unsuccessful spell in charge.

With Hyypia gone, Jones was appointed Caretaker boss for games with Reading and Fulham. However, Jones wasn’t ever in the running for the job on a permanent basis as chairman Tony Bloom and the board wanted someone with successful managerial and Championship level experience, something Jones didn’t have. In fact Jones stated before the Fulham game that he had ‘no personal ambition’ to take the Albion job at the time, despite his long term goals to be a manager.

After a 2-2 draw with Reading in which the Albion lead 2-0, Jones took charge again as the Albion visited Fulham. That night the Albion put in probably the best performance of the season so far to beat Fulham 2-0. The scenes at the end as Jones celebrated wildly in front of the Albion fans were special, if it were up to me I’d have given him the job there and then, but that is probably why I’m not in charge of making those decisions and Tony Bloom is. You can tell what that night meant to him too by watching his post match interview.

Later that week Chris Hughton was appointed manager and Jones was kept on as a first team coach. Hughton in fact was keen to keep him on board and had some nice things to say about Jones on his appointment. “Nathan Jones will very much be part of my first-team coaching staff and he has done a fantastic job here. I’m particularly grateful for the last two results and as somebody from the outside with a keen interest looking in, I was hoping that the last two results would fare well and he has done very well. I have a lot of respect for him as an individual and also as a coach, so I’m delighted to have him on board.”

During his time under Hughton and following his successful spell as caretaker, there were constant rumours Jones would leave the Albion and get his first job in management.

When Southgate invited him to shadow him and the other coaching staff of the England U21s it was another sign of his growing reputation. And when two months later he left to manage his old club Luton Town no one was surprised, in fact there was nothing but good wishes from the club. Albion Chairman Tony Bloom said, “Nathan has been a great servant to the club”, whilst Manager Chris Hughton said “Since I arrived, he has been an enormous help to me in my first year in the job; and alongside Colin Calderwood, he has played a big part in our progress in the last 12 months. I think he has all the attributes to become a very good manager.”

So it’s no surprise that Jones has done well at Luton, achieving promotion to League One last season, his first full season at the club. So well in fact that he was interviewed for Sunderland job in 2017, but some would say fortunately he missed out to fellow Welshman and former national team manager Chris Coleman. Fortunately as he now manages Luton at the same level as Sunderland following their relegation to League One in the same season and even more fortunately as Coleman is already out of a job whilst Jones’s reputation continues to rise.

One thing you may not know of Nathan is how much his religious faith, Christianity, shapes his life. The Rhondda village Nathan grew up in had a population of less than 2,000 but four practicing churches. He was so devoted to his faith that it was at the expense of a potential football career, missing a number of trials as a youngster because they were on a Sunday. Whilst he is still a devoted Christian his views on the Sunday holy day, have slightly altered. “I went to Cardiff and they had games on Sundays. I went to God and said, ‘I believe you brought me to this opportunity, I need to play.’ It was done in good faith. It was a necessity then. I believe God understands that.”

Through his faith Jones is in full belief he has fulfilled his potential and then some. “I don’t look back and think, I could’ve been this or that. I’ve surpassed any dream that I ever had and I’m very blessed, and in God’s will I did those things. If I hadn’t done all of those things, who’s to say if I’d be here?”. In modern society religion has a bad name and whilst there is much evidence of the evil it is responsible for, stories like Nathan’s shows the other side of the coin. In his case showing the strength it can give to people to achieve their goals.

So, what next for Nathan Jones? Currently he is managing a Luton side in League One who, despite a mixed start, have been tipped as an outsider for promotion to the Championship. As for the medium to long term future, if he continues his progress as a manager he’s certainly left enough of a mark in Sussex to be considered a potential future Albion manager.