When any team is successful over a sustained period of time, it is natural to start taking it for granted.
For the likes of Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s, and Manchester United under Sir Alex Ferguson, it reached a point where you simply couldn’t imagine them not winning.
While it is admittedly a stretch to compare these all-conquering sides to a club who have never lifted a major trophy, nor even qualified for the Champions League, there is a similar phenomenon surrounding Brighton & Hove Albion.
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Why Fabian Hurzeler isn't getting the credit he deserves
Mentioning the Seagulls in the same breath as those teams may sound ridiculous - particularly if you support Crystal Palace - but the south coast outfit are an era-defining club in a different way.
For the best part of a decade, Brighton have been the model club of English football. Under the ownership of Tony Bloom, Albion have risen up the pyramid and become an established Premier League side through a mix of data-driven recruitment, exemplary player trading and smart managerial appointments, while boasting a state-of-the-art stadium and top-class training facilities.
It is now expected that every unknown player they buy for next to nothing will be sold for a huge profit, following in the footsteps of Moises Caicedo, Carlos Baleba, Jan Paul van Hecke and many more.
It is now expected that the next manager they appoint will raise the level of the team, in the way that Graham Potter built on the work of Chris Hughton, and Roberto De Zerbi built on the work of Potter.
It is why everyone expected Fabian Hurzeler to be a good fit when he succeeded De Zerbi in summer 2024, despite the German being just 31 years old at the time, making him the youngest permanent head coach in Premier League history.
But De Zerbi was a hard act to follow. The Italian is a tactical innovator, hailed by Pep Guardiola as “one of the most influential managers in the last 20 years”, and led the Seagulls to sixth place in 2022/23, the highest finish in their 125-year existence.
Furthermore, in the era of Squad Cost Ratio and Profit and Sustainability rules, there is something of a glass ceiling for those outside the Premier League elite, as Aston Villa and Newcastle United - clubs with far richer histories than Brighton - have discovered.
As a result, the bare facts suggest Hurzeler has not taken Brighton to another level in the same way as his predecessors. Under the German, the Seagulls have not matched or bettered their sixth-place finish of 2022/23. That saw them qualify for the Europa League, something Hurzeler is yet to achieve. They haven’t reached the semi-finals of a cup competition, as they did under De Zerbi in the 2022/23 FA Cup.
The De Zerbi factor and the way it helped further raise expectations of Brighton means that Hurzeler isn’t getting the credit he deserves, externally at least. But dig a little deeper and it quickly becomes clear that he is doing an excellent job.
The former St Pauli boss has led the Seagulls to successive eighth-place finishes, which last season was enough to secure a place in the Conference League (they would have also qualified in 2024/25 if Palace hadn’t won the FA Cup).
Meanwhile, the Seagulls’ points tally of 61 in Hurzeler’s first campaign was only one shy of the 62 that saw them finish sixth under De Zerbi two years earlier. The 33-year-old also boasts a better win percentage than the Italian over a near identical period: 44.2 per cent across 95 games, compared to 42.7 per cent in 89 matches.
There were other eye-catching statistics doing the rounds after Brighton hammered Coventry City 5-0 last Sunday. In the first four rounds of matches, the Seagulls were the best-performing team in the Premier League for goals scored (13), Expected Goals (10.05), big chances created (19), crosses (107) and shots on target (24, which was the joint-highest tally). They were also equal second for shot conversion rate, at 16.7 per cent.
You could argue that Hurzeler’s side have had a favourable set of fixtures, playing Villa and Coventry at a good time and facing a Chelsea side who have been leaky defensively. Meanwhile, a high shot conversion rate that has them overperforming their xG suggests they have been unsustainably clinical.
But Brighton’s attacking numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Hurzeler has had to completely revamp his forward line in the early weeks of the campaign. The Seagulls sold Danny Welbeck to Chelsea this summer, while Kaoru Mitoma, Yankuba Minteh, Jack Hinshelwood and Georgino Rutter have all missed games due to injury.
As a result, Hurzeler has been fielding a front four of Charalampos Kostoulas, who made just two top-flight starts in 2025/26, Malick Yalcouye, who spent the past two seasons out on loan, Maxim De Cuyper - a full-back by trade - and Diego Gomez. That quartet boasts six goals and three assists between them this term.
It is only seven months since some Brighton fans wanted Hurzeler sacked during a run of one win from 13 league games. Those results would put any manager under pressure, but context is key: when that run began last December, the Seagulls were fifth in the table. When it ended, they were 14th. The club didn’t finish higher than 15th in their first four seasons back in the top flight - another indicator of how expectations have been raised.
Hurzeler turned it around, but the achievement of returning to Europe was overshadowed by Bournemouth and Sunderland ending the campaign in sixth and seventh respectively, which were bigger stories than another top-half finish for the Seagulls.
The season before, Nottingham Forest’s seventh-place finish and Palace’s FA Cup triumph grabbed the headlines. Those were both shocks, whereas eighth was simply par for the course for Brighton.
It feels like Hurzeler needs to lift the Conference League, reach a domestic cup final or qualify for the Champions League for the job he is doing to be fully appreciated.
Achieve any of those and it would rank as one of the greatest seasons in Brighton’s history - maybe then he will step out of De Zerbi’s shadow.
