CHRIS HUGHTON is well respected for his achievements at Brighton but he never forgot that it was Newcastle United who gave him his first job as a manager.

Steering both clubs to promotion from the Championship earned him the League Managers Association’s manager of the season accolade on each occasion (2010 and 2017).

The fact Brighton hadn’t reached the top tier for 34 years and had been close to the bottom of the Championship when Hughton took over meant he saw it as an even greater achievement than his Toon success.

“A lot of people ask me about the difference between that promotion and the one I had with Newcastle,” he said. “In all honesty, if I look at where the team was when I took over, I think it was a harder job to do it with Brighton.

“I’ll always remember Newcastle’s promotion as my first achievement as a manager, but this one was probably the most emotional.”

Albion were one place above the Championship relegation zone when Hughton took over at Brighton on New Year’s Eve 2014.

Club chairman Tony Bloom said: “Chris has an excellent record in coaching and management. He’s hugely respected, both nationally and internationally, and he has great contacts within the game.

“He is someone who has a real wealth of experience in the top two divisions, from nearly 15 years at Spurs as a coach, assistant and interim manager, through to his more recent work in the Premier League and Championship.

“Chris is also a manager who has a track record for developing talent at all levels from academy upwards and will embrace the work we’ve been doing at the club in this area in recent seasons.

“Importantly, we also felt Chris is someone who can improve our immediate situation, while also having the management credentials and skills to plan our long-term future and help us to get back to progressing in the way we have in previous seasons.”

Former Spurs and Fulham captain and ex-Brighton manager Alan Mullery, by then an Albion ambassador, declared: “I think they have pulled off a real coup by bringing in Chris. He’s a very experienced manager, both at this level and in the Premier League, and he is a good man as well.

“We obviously go back a long way with our Tottenham connections; I know him well and his lovely family.

“He’ll be keen to see his players keep possession of the ball, but I also think he’ll make the side harder to beat. He knows exactly what is needed to be a success at this level and I’m sure we’ll see his own stamp on the team as the weeks pass.”

Indeed, in an interview with Tony Hodson for coachesvoice.com, Hughton spoke about how he set about the task of restoring Albion’s fortunes.

“When you join at that stage of the season, it’s about instilling the system that you want to play in as short a period of time as you can and getting the players to buy into that system.

“You hope that the reaction to a new manager coming in is a help and not a hindrance to that. And in most cases it is a help, because everybody wants to do well. But I was aware that the team had been through a difficult period, and that I was changing their way of playing quite dramatically.

“Everything rested on how they’d respond to it, and fortunately they did that well (Albion just avoided the drop, finishing third from bottom). But even then, I knew it was going to take a summer of working with them throughout the pre-season period, and recruiting well, to take the club where they really wanted to go.”

Hughton continued: “In my first full season at Brighton, we came within touching distance of automatic promotion to the Premier League, missing out on goal difference. We then had less than a week to prepare for the first leg of our playoff semi final against Sheffield Wednesday.

“We lost it 2-0. And, despite playing some of the best football we’d played all season for 30 minutes of the second leg at the Amex, we drew that game – meaning that, despite losing just six league games all season, our hopes of playing Premier League football the following year were over.

“The question then was, having got so close to promotion and put so much into achieving that aim, what would the reaction be like from the players next season?

“Would they be as determined to go through it all again? The honest answer is that, at that moment, you just don’t know.

“All you can hope is that the disappointment will drive them on, and that you’ve instilled enough into them to give you the best possible chance of success. As soon as pre-season started, though, I could feel we had a group of players who were desperate to go again. We were playing in a division that had a lot of strong teams, but thankfully we started the season well – we lost just twice before the turn of the year.”

Hughton recalled: “With four games of the season to go, we were top of the league. By that stage, I was quietly confident that we were going to achieve promotion.

“Going into our game against Wigan Athletic – at home, where we had a strong record – I was equally confident of getting a result. But that belief doesn’t take anything away from the emotion of what you feel inside once the job is done, and promotion is secured.

“At that stage, it becomes not so much about yourself but what it means to the club, the fans, to the people who employ you, and to a group of players who were desperate to be Premier League footballers.”

While Brighton’s ownership and structure suited Hughton down to the ground, his time at Newcastle was largely against a backdrop of turmoil off the pitch.

Nonetheless, the ever reasonable Hughton said: “Newcastle are a club and a fanbase that I have the utmost respect for and I will always want them to do well.”

Hughton spent three years on Tyneside, initially as first-team coach under Kevin Keegan. Toon finished that first season 12th in the league – but the following year it all went wrong.

“By the end of the season, there had been three different managers in charge – and defeat to Aston Villa on the final day meant that, after 16 years in the top flight, Newcastle were relegated,” he recalled in an interview with coachesvoice.com.

During the close season of 2009, Hughton was appointed caretaker manager before the position was made permanent in November of that year.

So, after all those years of coaching, the likeable Londoner finally had his opportunity to be a manager in his own right, although he admitted: “However much preparation you have as a coach, when you cross that line into management it is completely different.

“Newcastle was far from the stable, calm environment you would want when starting out. The team had just been relegated, we’d lost a lot of players and the club was up for sale. I had to dig deep and draw on the wealth of experience I’d gained as a coach.

“I knew I still had a good squad, so the challenge was making sure each and every one pushed in the right direction to get us back into the Barclays Premier League.

“Central to that was creating the right environment at the training ground, because the training pitch can provide great solace for players. I knew that if I could get everyone on board, we could be a strong force in the Championship.”

As he told coachesvoice.com: “Everybody was aware that the owner was trying to sell the club – and we had players who wanted to leave for Premier League clubs or moves abroad. We had to quickly determine the ones who wanted to stay and fight – the ones who wanted to get the club back up into the Premier League.

“There was so much uncertainty around the club. But, even in those situations, there are some things that will always remain. Firstly, the team have to train. Irrespective of what’s going on around them, that’s what players want to do. They enjoy training.

“By the time we’d got past the transfer window and it was determined which players were going to stay, I knew we had a group who were determined to go straight back up again.”

As it turned out, it couldn’t have gone better for him. The side were unbeaten at home and earned promotion back to the Premier League as the 2010 Championship title winners. Hughton won the LMA Championship Manager of the Year title too.

This was a side in which Andy Carroll netted 19 goals and Kevin Nolan 17 blending successfully with the likes of Jose Enrique, Fabricio Coloccini and Jonas Gutierrez.

In December the following season, amazingly, with Newcastle sitting 11^th in the Premier League table, Hughton was sacked – and his players weren’t happy about it.

Joey Barton, Nolan, Steve Harper and Alan Smith complained to managing director Derek Llambias over the hasty manner of his departure.

The League Managers Association also took a dim view. Its chief executive Richard Bevan said: “The LMA is extremely disappointed that Newcastle have parted company with Chris given the success the club has experienced since his appointment.

“Throughout his time at Newcastle, Chris has conducted himself with tremendous integrity and dignity, the team’s current position of 11th demonstrating the stabilising effect Chris has had in his role as manager during his period at Newcastle.”

Hughton, meanwhile, with characteristic understatement, told leadersinperfomance.com: “I was disappointed, but I didn’t let it knock my confidence and self belief.

“It helped to know that many managers and others in football thought I’d done a good job at Newcastle. The reaction was terrifically supportive. My coping mechanism was to keep busy and prepare for the next job.”

In an exclusive interview with Lee Ryder for chroniclelive.co.uk, Hughton reflected warmly on his time at the club, saying: “I don’t look back on my time at Newcastle – because it’s always there with me, once you’ve been part of the club it never goes away.

“For me, there were so many firsts. It was the first time I’d worked away from London, Newcastle was my first stint away from the capital.

“It was my first role as a manager and first foray into management. And it was my first time in the Championship.

“So, for me, Newcastle is always with me, always there, it was an incredible time.”

Hughton told the reporter: “The one thing I have been very grateful for was the opportunity to do it. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity because it set me on the way to a management career.

“That was an unbelievable start for me and that’s what I will never forget – even without pictures and reminders. It’s always etched into my head.”

In the circumstances of his departure from Newcastle, it was probably not a surprise that he didn’t have to wait long for another job, although it was back in the Championship at Birmingham City, after they’d been relegated from the Premier League under Alex McLeish at the end of the 2010-11 season.

Having won the League Cup, Blues competed in the Europa League in 2011-12, competing in eight qualifying and group matches. In spite of that burden, they finished fourth in the league. Unfortunately, they lost to Blackpool in the play-off semi-finals.

Their penultimate game of the season had been at the Amex against Gus Poyet’s Seagulls, a game which finished in a 1-1 draw, the point enough to guarantee their play-off place. The matchday programme gave plenty of coverage to the visitors and their manager.

talkSPORT presenter and Blues fan Ian Danter spoke about how the side had benefited from Hughton’s “calm approach” and his “sharp and focused manner” after an astonishing churn of 27 players in or out of the club over the summer.

And he said the fans had really taken to Hughton, adding: “He has been the one aspect that has pulled everyone together and he has certainly done well with the players. He has got his theories and ideas across to them. He also understands his constraints from board level regarding money.”

When Paul Lambert decided to jump ship and leave Norwich City to take over at Birmingham’s city rivals Aston Villa, the vacancy at Carrow Road proved ideal to enable Hughton to step back up to the elite level in English football.

He signed a three-year deal with Norwich, taking assistant manager Colin Calderwood and first team coach Paul Trollope with him.

“My decision to leave was based on what Norwich City had to offer,” he said. “The chance to return to managing at Premier League level at a club that had made great strides in the preceding seasons. It very much whetted my appetite.”

He admitted to the Birmingham Mail that it had been a tough decision but added: “As a manager or coach you want to manage or coach at the highest level. The draw of going to the Premier League was one that was too big an opportunity to turn down.

“In some ways Norwich is, possibly, a very similar club to Birmingham. They have a very loyal and local support.

“This was an opportunity to return to the Premier League and that is what excited me.”

Hughton led Norwich to an 11th-place finish in the top flight during the 2012-13 season but patience hasn’t always been in plentiful supply at City and with relegation on the cards the following season, he was sacked with five games still to play.

A 1-0 home defeat to West Brom on 5 April 2014 had been the final straw and in angry post-match scenes the Carrow Road faithful called for Hughton’s dismissal. Only one point was gained from the remaining four matches and they were relegated anyway in 18^th position, three points short of the Baggies in 17^th.

It would be eight months before Hughton rode to Brighton’s rescue, picking up the reins of what had been a challenging first half of the 2014-15 season under the relatively inexperienced coach Sami Hyypia.

Having reached the Premier League within a season and a half of taking charge at Brighton, Hughton reflected: “My ultimate responsibility was to make sure that we stayed there. That means making the right decisions when it comes to putting together a team you feel is going to be good enough to do that.

“At that point, you have to take the emotion out of it. Hard choices have to be made in terms of areas you feel need to be strengthened. But it’s also about finding the right balance between keeping the consistency of players who have been playing together for a period of time, and deciding whether they are good enough to make that step up.

“At the time, I thought that we had the makings of a team, and a mentality, that didn’t need too much work. And, for the next two seasons, we remained a Premier League team.”

Hughton received an honorary degree from the University of Sussex to mark his achievements in the game and admitted: “It’s a huge honour and something I certainly didn’t expect.

“To do what we have done over the past four years with Brighton and to be honoured for that is something that is hugely humbling.”

It was the second half of 2018-19 that changed the wave of goodwill, though. Although Albion reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, league form was poor.

Even so, when Hughton was summoned to meet chairman Bloom at the training ground the day after Manchester City eclipsed Brighton 4-1 to win the league title, he had no idea the fate that awaited him.

“It came as a shock to lose my job in the way that I did,” he said. And in a subsequent interview with Alyson Rudd of The Times, he said: “The biggest disappointment is that I never saw it coming.

“As a manager you get a feel when things are not right or relationships have broken down, but there was never anything there for me to feel what was coming. I thought the chairman was in there for club stuff or if he was there to see me it was about the pre-season, so it was a big shock. For a moment, I couldn’t say anything. I absolutely wasn’t expecting it. I was stunned; there was a silence.”

Hughton felt getting Albion into the Premier League and never being in the bottom three once was “achieving” although he admitted: “I am very conscious that the second half of the season was not as good as the first and it was not a rosy situation.”

But he pointed out: “I spent four and a half years there and never had an argument with the chairman, never had an argument with (chief executive) Paul Barber, never had an argument with (technical director) Dan Ashworth. I’m certainly not bitter. If you end up bitter, you’re the only one who loses out. It was the club’s prerogative.”

Hughton’s way back into the game post-Brighton came at the City Ground, Nottingham, in October 2020 when he succeeded Sabri Lamouchi who’d had a winless start to the Championship season.

Even though he was able to turn to three of his former Brighton promotion-winners in Glenn Murray, Gaetan Bong and Anthony Knockaert, Forest had an indifferent campaign and finished in a disappointing 17^th place. The new season was only into its second month when Hughton was shown the door having secured just one point from the first seven games. His successor, Steve Cooper, led Forest to promotion.

Hughton’s next job in football came with his appointment in February 2022 as the technical advisor to Ghana’s national football team.

He then replaced coach Otto Addo as head coach after Ghana finished bottom of their group at the World Cup in Qatar. But he won just two of his nine matches in charge (three draws and four defeats) and was relieved of his duties in January 2024 after Ghana exited the Africa Cup of Nations at the group stage.

Amongst many different articles and interviews about Hughton, perhaps this leadersinperformance.com piece best sums him up: “Modest and measured in his approach, Chris Hughton is a rare find in the world of senior management.

“Confident in his own personality and abilities, Hughton has no reservations about drawing inspiration from a host of managers, past and present.

“While Chris Hughton remains true wherever possible to his calm and thoughtful style of leadership, underneath is a steel and determination that enables him to deal with the tough scenarios that inevitably arise in football, albeit in a respectful manner.

“It is perhaps because of this considered, well-balanced and open style of leadership that he has become one of the most employable and universally liked managers around.”