Technical director, head coach, his coaching staff, assistant head of recruitment, player of the season, star midfielder, former top scorer. It is hard to imagine many clubs who have suffered so many key departures of quality people who were doing their jobs to a high standard. Albion are happy to allow their staff, on and off the pitch, to talk to prospective new employers. Paul Barber says that will not change as far as he and chairman Tony Bloom are concerned – even as the list of exits becomes ever more significant. Albion’s chief executive and deputy chairman, who himself signed a new contract this summer,
Paul Barber said: “No. Football clubs are not prisons. We are not in a position to hold employees against their will. What we try to do as much as we can is protect ourselves with contracts. Contracts, we hope, will always be respected, but where people have an outstanding opportunity and they feel that it’s better for them, their careers, their families, then we’ve got an open mind. “Obviously, we don’t want to lose our best people and we make it as difficult as possible for people to leave and for people to take our staff but in certain situations we have to be realistic that it will happen. And in that scenario we either protect ourselves with contracts that allow us to place people on gardening leave, as we did with Dan (Ashworth), in order to protect our club or to guard against losing key people at key times, or protect ourselves financially. A combination of those at times is necessary. But there will always come a point when someone will want to move on. And we have be realistic about that and manage it, and that is why succession planning is important. That’s why a good awareness of the market and who we would move for if certain eventualities came to pass, those things are important. “But to tell someone that they can’t speak to another prospective employer, in my opinion and Tony’s opinion, only breeds the kind of behaviour where people go behind your back, they have secret meetings, and it comes out and it’s a bigger story. It’s more disruptive, it’s potentially more damaging, it unsettles more staff.”
Barber is keen to point out other clubs have lost a lot of key individuals in a short period of time on occasions. Which is no doubt true. But the departures at Albion are across a range of roles – not just a manager going or a group of star players. And they sting because they come at a time when it felt like the club had established something very special, only to be snatched away.
Paul Barber said: “It happens to every other football club as well, don’t get me wrong. We are not unique in losing good people and good players at different times. It has been a very challenging few months because of the losses we have had but we put n place plans and succession to manage that and to be resilient to it. That is now being tested and we simply have to manage through the process and replace Graham.
We have replaced Dan very quickly with David (Weir), who has done an excellent job as technical director.
Paul Barber said: “We have replaced the players we lost, again with a plan to make to sure we had those players in place either before the players we lost left or very shortly afterwards. With the coaching staff, this is unfortunately part and parcel of the game. It is a while since Brighton have lost top coaches to a club considered to be one of the biggest in Europe. I take that as a huge compliment and Graham and his staff did exceptionally well for us for three years and have earned that, so we wish them well.”
Potter was asked about how recent events affected different people – including Billy Gilmour, the midfielder who signed from Chelsea just before Potter made the opposite move.
Graham Potter said: “It isn’t ideal, far from ideal. But my experience of working with professional footballers for the last 25 years is that they are resilient and pragmatic. They take a lot of support from senior players at the squad. My limited experience of talking to Billy is that he is a very calm and very mature young man. He has been around football all his life and I’m sure he will take this in his stride. He will be helped by the other players and by Andrew Crofts and Shannon Ruth as need be. The fortunate position we are in is that we are not facing Premier League matches tomorrow, this week or next week. We have time. Billy is still finding his way around the training ground, let alone a new coach. The timing around the transfer window closing was always potentially going to leave one or two players in Billy’s situation if this happens. Players are resilient and professional and we have a good group and the senior players will bridge any gap that might exist and we will move on from there.”
