Dubai: Brighton and Hove Albion legend Bobby Zamora admits he’s gutted to be missing out on a historic Premier League promotion with the Seagulls, but backs the club to win the Championship this season and stay up next year.
Chris Hughton’s side are two points clear of Newcastle United at the top of English football’s second tier with five games remaining, and can assure their first ever promotion to the Premier League with victory away to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Friday (kick-off 8pm UAE time).
The East Sussex club have previously only been in the top flight — the old Division One — once for a spell of four years from 1979 to 1983, reaching the FA Cup final where they lost to Manchester United in a replay, before relegation that same season.
Zamora, aged 36, who scored 83 goals in 151 appearances for the club over two spells from 2000 to 2003 and 2015 to 2016, could have achieved Premier League promotion with the club last season, but missed out on goal difference by all of two goals, before retiring due to a hip injury.
“It was really gutting because I would have been promoted with them in every division, which would have been brilliant,” said the former striker, who also played for Tottenham, West Ham, Fulham and Queens Park Rangers, on the sidelines of this week’s Football Escapes soccer school at Jumeirah Beach Hotel.
“To miss out on goal difference was a right kick in the teeth but they’ve learnt from that and have managed themselves this year extremely well. Fingers crossed, they can just get over the line.
“They are in a position now where they can win the league, so they need to change their mindset from getting promotion to being champions. And that would be a massive achievement for them.
“They’ve done it through determination and understanding of the division. Some games you can dominate; others you have to dig in and grind out a result and there can be games where you have to put on a tin hat and fight. They’ve been able to cope with every demand thrown at them and have adapted to every situation.”
The club sold their Goldstone Ground in 1997 while bottom of the third division and for two years shared Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium 120 km away, before moving into the council-owned Withdean Stadium, which was an athletics venue and former zoo.
Because they were paying rent to the council and had a limited income from ticket sales as the stadium’s capacity was only 8,850, they almost went bust in 2004. They came back from the brink thanks to community fundraisers and moved into their own ground, the 30,750 all-seater Falmer Stadium in 2011, ending 12 years without a home.
“It’s been a great story really in terms of how they have progressed as a club slowly but surely.
“The dilemma now is what they do as a club in terms of wage structure and recruitment, and that’s hard for a newly promoted side that’s never been in the Premier League.
“What they need to do is add talent but not lose that togetherness, belief and willingness to fight for each other by adding too many players that don’t buy into what they already have there.
“One or two wrong players can make a big difference in the changing room,” he added, citing Burnley and Bournemouth as examples of how promoted clubs have got it right. Only five of the last 10 Championship winners are still in the Premier League.
“Only a couple of Brighton’s players have played in the Premier League before so they need a couple more with that experience, they just need to make sure they get players with the right character.
“Otherwise there are a lot of Premier League-standard players there so hopefully the gulf won’t be too big.”
Football Escapes partners with former Premier League players to run kids’ soccer schools in holiday locations. This is their first visit to Dubai and they hope to return for the October half-term.