Month: November 2019

Skilful Joao Teixeira scored six as Seagulls escaped the drop

THERE were few positive aspects to Sami Hyypia’s reign as Brighton manager but his Liverpool connections served the club sufficiently well enough to enable them to secure the loan signing of Joao Teixeira.

Here was a highly talented young player who often had supporters on the edge of their seats when he was on the ball.

It seems remarkable to think his six goals in 35 games (28 starts + seven as sub) for the Seagulls made him second top scorer behind Lewis Dunk’s seven in the 2014-15 season, when Albion narrowly avoided dropping out of the Championship.

Joao THis performances earned him the Young Player of the Year accolade even though his season was cut short by injury.

Having impressed as a substitute going on for Albion against Birmingham, Teixeira was on the scoresheet in his first full start, in a 2-0 win away to Leeds United. Hyypiä told Sky Sports: “Of course I am grateful to them for letting Joao come to us and get the games he needs, but it works both ways. They can benefit too because his time with us can hopefully be a stepping stone towards Liverpool’s first team.

“He is a young player and Liverpool have a very big squad. A player of his age needs to play games to improve. We have a quality player and I am very happy to have him with us.”

JT BHAFCThe Portuguese youngster scored again four days later, netting the winner as Albion came from behind to beat Bolton Wanderers 2-1 at the Amex.

Sadly, with the Seagulls floundering under the puzzling direction of the former Liverpool central defender, Teixeira didn’t get back on the scoresheet until after Chris Hughton arrived on New Year’s Eve 2014.

He twice scored braces (in a 3-2 home win over Ipswich on 21 January and a 4-3 home win over Birmingham on 21 February) but a leg break in a home game against Huddersfield Town on 14 April brought his season, and Albion career, to a premature end.

Born in Braga, Portugal, on 18 January 1993, he first caught the eye with his hometown club, before being snapped up by Sporting Lisbon where he continued to make progress through its youth teams.

Liverpool paid £830,000 in the January 2012 transfer window to take him to Anfield and he impressed playing for their under 21 side which led to him making a loan move to League One Brentford in August 2013. But what was originally due to be a six-month arrangement was cut short in October after only two substitute appearances because the Bees couldn’t guarantee him the game time Liverpool had been expecting him to get.

Back on Merseyside, he made it into the first team squad and on 12 February 2014 Brendan Rodgers sent him on as a substitute for Raheem Sterling in a 3-2 win at Fulham.

getty liv TeixCaptain Steven Gerrard told the Liverpool FC website: “I watched this kid a couple of years ago playing for Sporting Lisbon against Liverpool at Anfield in a youth game; I could see straight away he was the best player on the pitch.

“Credit to him, he has kept working hard. He has been invited to train with the first team. He is competing, he is trying to improve and learn. He listens – I’ve just been speaking to him in the dressing room and you can see he wants to learn and listen.

“He has got respect for the other players in the dressing room. This is the start for him now; I’ve just told him that he needs to push on, keep learning and building on what he has just achieved. He deserved his debut and he made a special tackle which helped us get over the line.”

As it turned out, his next senior action came at Brighton and he had to wait until October 2015 before his next chance at Liverpool. That came in a League Cup game in a 1-0 win over Bournemouth. He went on to make five cup appearances for Jurgen Klopp’s Reds in 2015-16, and scored his only goal for the club in a 3-0 FA Cup win over Exeter City. But he appeared only once in the Premier League.

Although Liverpool offered him a new contract, he chose to return to Portugal and join Porto. After making only eight appearances during the 2016-17 season, Teixeira joined hometown club Braga on a season-long loan, and this season is playing for Primeira Liga side Vitoria Guimaraes.

Leicester lad Matt Heath plugged Albion defensive gap

Heath celebratesDUCK-loving Matt Heath didn’t shirk a challenge and came to Brighton’s rescue in 2009 when injury and suspension decimated Albion’s available defenders.

Albion were fighting for their League One lives and were in between managers when Heath arrived in March to plug a gap caused by Tommy Elphick, Adam Hinshelwood and Adam Virgo all being sidelined.

Experienced former Leicester City central defender Heath joined on loan from Colchester United, signed at the same time as striker Lloyd Owusu, who undoubtedly made more of a noteworthy contribution with some vital goals and his famous ‘raising the roof’ goal celebration.

As well as defensive problems, Albion also had Nicky Forster, Glenn Murray and loan signing Calvin Andrew out injured as they approached a period of games vital to their chances of staying in the division.

On signing the pair, caretaker manager Dean White told the Argus: “The injury situation meant it was vital to bring players in and Matt and Lloyd are two good additions. They certainly strengthen the squad and both have good experience at this level and higher.”

The 6ft 4ins Heath had made 11 appearances for Colchester that season but only one start since the turn of the year.

He played in six games and scored on his debut away to Leyton Orient on 8 March, the game which marked the beginning of Russell Slade’s period in charge of the Seagulls. Ultimately a recurrence of groin trouble brought an end to his brief Albion career.

Ironically, it was Slade’s predecessor at the Withdean, Micky Adams, who’d been Heath’s manager at Leicester, Coventry City and Colchester.

Born in Leicester on 11 January 1981, Heath came through the Foxes academy, made his debut in the 2001-02 season and went on to play 60 first team games for the club, including 17 Premier League games alongside Ricardo Scimeca. During the 2003-04 season, he had an eight-game loan spell with Stockport County.

Heath scors 4 Leic

In 2005, Adams went back to his old club to take Heath to Coventry City for a £45,000 fee. He played 26 games for the Sky Blues in 2005-06 but only eight games the following season and, in November 2006, was loaned out to Leeds United who made the move permanent in January 2007.

Heath relished his time playing under manager Dennis Wise and his assistant Gus Poyet but after playing 50 games for Leeds, Wise’s successor Gary McAllister deemed him surplus to requirements at Elland Road and Heath once again went to play for Adams, this time at Colchester.

He initially joined on loan but then spent five seasons on the Us’ books, making a total of 106 appearances, albeit during his time with them he had a couple of spells out on loan.

One of those was that brief stint at Brighton and the following season he played four games for Southend United.

When his contract was up at Colchester, he switched to Northampton Town, where the manager was one of his old Colchester bosses, Aidy Boothroyd, but he didn’t make any first team appearances and left the club to join non-league Harrogate Town in January 2008 where he made 29 appearances. Next up was Harrogate Railway FC.

However, Heath simultaneously pursued an education role in sport, and he became a course manager and lecturer at Askham Bryan College in York having studied football coaching at the University of East Anglia.

In March 2019, Askham Bryan College announced it was becoming a sports hub for Leeds United, with Heath playing a prominent role.

Heath talked about the importance of former professional players having a plan for life after football in an interview with Non-League Yorkshire.

He said: “I’ve had so many good friends in the pro game and they’re all five years younger than me and I’ve told all of them to do something because you have so much time on your hands when you’re playing pro football.

“I’ve said: ‘Get a qualification or do something because when it all finishes, you either get lucky and fall into something like myself or you’ll be in a place where you’re not sure what to do’.

“I think most of the lads in the pro game don’t realise that it just stops like that.”

In 2015, Heath combined his day job with captaining Northern League – North West Division side Tadcaster Albion and then became assistant manager for two years, working under Billy Miller, who was his boss (head of sports and public services) at Askham before being promoted to a director.

Heath subsequently became a teacher-coach in Leeds’ education department, working with a group of would-be footballer students in Nottingham.

“The kids finish their GCSEs and want to carry on in education and the college provide a programme where they carry on with their education, get a Level 3 BTEC-extended Diploma and we link it alongside training every day and play in the National League as well, ” he explained to Jonathan Waldron of the Colchester Gazette, in a February 2021 interview.

“So the kids get the training, the education and luckily I’ve got a role there where I’m part of both of it, in the classroom and out on the training field as well and matchdays for our college.”

Telling the reporter that he still looks out for the results of all the clubs he used to play for, he added: “It’s nice to reminisce but my family just tell me to shut up if I go on about it!

“I was lucky; dedication and hard work gets you a long way in football and you have to have a bit of a rub of the green, along the way and managers and coaches who take an interest in you and see something and then roll with it a little bit.

“I’m proud of what I achieved.”

Heath college coach

‘Bright prospect’ James Wilson faded after great start

JW v WolvesGREAT things were expected of James Wilson after he scored two goals on his Manchester United debut.

Caretaker manager Ryan Giggs gave the 18-year-old the opportunity to prove himself at first-team level in a home game against Hull City in 2014 and he was instantly repaid.

Wilson UtdA few months later, Wilson signed a four-year contract, with new manager Louis van Gaal describing him as “one of the brightest young English prospects”.

But that early promise evaporated as injury problems and the emergence of the talented Marcus Rashford overshadowed his progress.

“I wanted to get out of my comfort zone on loan at Brighton and while I was there Rashford came through,” Wilson told ESPN. “I came back and never really got that chance again. Injuries were a big thing.”

The Biddulph-born striker eventually severed ties with Old Trafford in the summer of 2019 having first joined United in 2002 aged only seven.

In the season after his impressive debut against Hull, he made a further 17 appearances for United and scored two more, but he appeared in only one Premier League game and one League Cup game in 2015-16, and didn’t feature for United’s first team again.

JW England u21Wilson represented England at under 16, under 19, under 20 and under 21 levels but a career in England’s top-flight proved elusive and he is now playing for Scottish Premiership side Aberdeen.

One of several loan spells Wilson had away from United saw him join Brighton’s ultimately unsuccessful bid for promotion from the Championship in November 2015.

Although he showed glimpses of real quality, and scored five goals, he often seemed to be fatigued and ended up making just 12 starts plus 15 more from the bench.

Perhaps, rather unfortunately, he is best remembered for being caught by the TV cameras vomiting on the pitch immediately before a game against Wolves on New Year’s Day.

Wilson’s start for the Seagulls was impressive enough: a goal on his full debut in a 3-2 win over Charlton Athletic. “I remember picking the ball up on the edge of the D and just drove at the centre backs. They backed off, I managed to get my shot away and it went through their ‘keeper’s legs,” he said in a subsequent Albion matchday programme.

He followed that one with the opener in a 2-2 draw away to Derby County.

Tomer Hemed and Sam Baldock were more often than not manager Chris Hughton’s preferred selection up front although Wilson rewarded Hughton’s decision to give him his first start for two months in place of Hemed in a home game against Reading on 15 March. He scored the only goal of the game and Albion edged into second place as the promotion race hotted up.

JW scores v DerbyHe also scored (above) in the fifth minute of added on time to secure Albion a point in their penultimate league game at home to Derby, but when runners-up spot eluded the Seagulls courtesy of the last-game 1-1 draw at Middlesbrough, and when Albion failed to overcome Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship play-offs, Wilson returned to Old Trafford.

At the start of the following season, he was on his travels again, this time to Derby, but his season-long loan ended prematurely in October 2016 when he sustained an anterior cruciate ligament knee injury that sidelined him for months.

While he eventually returned to action in United’s under 23 side, he didn’t get a first team chance under Jose Mourinho and instead spent the second half of the 2017-18 season on loan to Sheffield United where he scored once in nine appearances.

He spent the whole of the 2018-19 season on loan at Aberdeen, scoring four goals in 32 games and then signed for them permanently in the summer of 2019, aiming to reignite his career. But having not scored in 16 games in the latter part of 2019, he was allowed to return to the Manchester area, signing on 31 January 2020 for League Two Salford City.

James Wilson Aberdeen