Tag: Chris Powell

Button rarely pressed into action with the Albion

JOURNEYMAN goalkeeper David Button has travelled the length and breadth of the country in pursuit of playing time, his three years at Brentford being a rare settled spell in which he played 141 games.

Normally only a loanee or a back-up ‘keeper at a multitude of clubs, he had a season and a half as Fulham’s first choice but at Brighton between 2018 and 2020 he only made 10 first team starts.

Button was 29 when he signed for the Albion and he stepped into the boots vacated by Tim Krul, the previous back-up ‘keeper, who had moved on to Norwich City. With both upcoming goalkeepers Christian Walton and Robert Sanchez out on loan, boss Chris Hughton wanted a third senior ‘keeper.

Largely a watching brief

“He has a wealth of experience, having made over 300 appearances during his career so far, and I’m sure he will work well with Maty Ryan and Jason Steele,” said Hughton.

Button made his debut in a pre-season 2-1 friendly defeat against AFC Wimbledon, and realised from the outset that Ryan was going to be ahead of him.

“I’m not coming in blind to the situation, but I want to impress and be ready for the chance in the side – there has to be healthy competition wherever you are as a player and hopefully I can provide that for him,” he said. 

“There could be a chance for me and Jason in January if Maty goes away to the Asia Cup with Australia, so we’ll both be working hard to ensure we’re ready for that if the opportunity arises. 

“I know he’s very well thought of but at the same time you have to back yourself and work hard every day and do as well as you can.”

Indicating what might be expected of him, he said: “I’m confident with the ball at my feet – it’s a slightly different style to Fulham and we are allowed to go a bit more direct here and it’s something I feel I’m good at. 

“I think it’s a bit less risky – we play when we can and keep it when we can – the risk factor involved in playing it out of defence is less for me here though.”

Button certainly found a familiar face at training: goalkeeper coach Ben Roberts had previously worked with him at Charlton Athletic, and he said of him: “He has got a great reputation within the game and everyone he’s worked with speaks highly of him. I genuinely believe he’s one of the best at what he does.”

Button’s first competitive action for the Seagulls came in the fourth game of the season, a 1-0 home League Cup defeat to Southampton. He had to wait until December, when Ryan was away playing for Australia, to play in the Premier League.

In Premier League action v Everton

He kept a clean sheet in the first of them, a 1-0 home win over Everton, when he made a handful of saves, including turning a Richarlison effort onto a post.

“Although he’s a very experienced goalkeeper, it’s never easy when you’re coming in at this stage of the season and following Maty Ryan, who’s done so well for us,” Hughton said. “It wasn’t an easy decision because I’ve got two goalkeepers who are really pushing. But probably his experience managed to get him the nod (over Steele).

“It’s great for him to come into this first game and, not only be on a winning team, but also a clean sheet and that will do him the world of good.”

But that was as good as it got; Albion drew 2-2 at West Ham on New Year’s Day and lost to Liverpool (1-0) at the Amex and Man Utd (2-1) at Old Trafford. A 3-1 third round FA Cup win at Bournemouth saw then no.3 Jason Steele given a chance between the sticks.

On Ryan’s return, Button was back to the bench although he kept goal twice in Albion’s run to the semi-finals of the FA Cup: Button in the fourth round win over West Brom and in the fifth round win over Derby County. Hughton went with Ryan for the quarter final at Millwall and the semi v Man City.

When Graham Potter succeeded Hughton, Button spoke about the changes the goalkeepers then had to embrace. “We are now doing more work with our feet,” he told the matchday programme. “There is more onus on us to be better with the ball and to be comfortable with it.”

The opportunity to put it into practice was even less than previously for Button, though: he played just two League Cup matches in 2019-20 (Bristol Rovers and Aston Villa and one FA Cup tie (v Sheffield Wednesday).

At the start of the 2020-21 season, the ‘keeper swapped one Albion for another and signed for newly-promoted West Brom.

“I have ambitions of playing and helping the team as much as possible but I obviously understand that Sam (Johnstone) has got them promoted last season so he will start the season,” said Button.

“It’s up to me to push him and show the manager what I can do and take my chances when I get them. Hopefully there’ll be things I can bring to the squad certainly. I’m quite calm and comfortable with my feet too and commanding in my box so I’d say they’re my main strengths.”

However, Button played just one Premier League game in that first season plus three cup matches.

There was slightly more involvement in 2021-22 when the experienced stopper made 11 appearances in all competitions, including playing the final five Championship games and keeping consecutive clean sheets in the last three matches, against Coventry City, Reading and Barnsley.

When Button swapped West Brom for League One Reading in August 2023, one Baggies supporter wasn’t sorry to see the back of him. “’It is definitely the right move to offload David Button, he has been the worst goalkeeper I have ever seen at Albion,” said fan Matt Smith on footballleagueworld.co.uk.

“We’ve had some pretty decent goalies since I’ve been going, however Button was absolutely atrocious over a significant period of time too. How on earth did we spend £1m on him?

“How Steve Bruce gave him a two-year contract at the end of the 2021-22 season is beyond me. He’s so bad honestly. He can’t catch a bloody cold. He’s awful.”

Born in Stevenage on 27 February 1989, Button was with local club Stevenage Borough in their centre of excellence and acknowledged the input of the Coaching FX goalkeeping school in his early development.

“Keith Fenwick was my first coach: his first-class and very enjoyable sessions definitely helped to develop my love of being a keeper,” he said.

Button moved from youth academy to professional at Spurs

An England schoolboy and youth international, Button moved on to Tottenham’s youth academy in 2003, signed a scholarship deal two years later and then earned a four-year professional contract in December 2007. However, he only had eight minutes of first team action for Spurs – as a substitute for Carlo Cudicini in a League Cup match – and was loaned out 13 times.

Over his four years as a Spurs pro, he had two spells each at Crewe Alexandra and non-League Grays Athletic, plus stints at Rochdale, Bournemouth, Luton, Dagenham & Redbridge, Shrewsbury Town, Plymouth Argyle, Leyton Orient, Doncaster and Barnsley.

In the 2009-10 season, he notched up a total of 36 League Two appearances (10 for Crewe and 26 for Shrewsbury) and 30 in League One the following season, when with Peter Reid’s Plymouth, where he kept Romain Larrieu out of the team for much of the campaign.

When he eventually left Spurs permanently, he didn’t travel too far, joining Chris Powell’s Charlton in the Championship for £500,000. Powell preferred Ben Hamer in goal, though, and Button was restricted to a handful of appearances before moving on to Brentford.

In an interview with getwestlondon, Button said: “It was a little bit of a frustrating time for me at Charlton. I would like to think I would have been given a chance a bit sooner there. It was a difficult year but it helped build my character.”

When Brentford sold Simon Moore to Cardiff, manager Uwe Rösler took Button to Griffin Park declaring: “We decided David was the perfect choice for us. He is at the right age and he is very hungry to make the number one spot his own.

“As soon as Simon left, David was our first choice. David will face strong competition for the goalkeeper spot from Jack Bonham and Richard Lee, when Richard is fit again.

“We have been strong there (in the goalkeeping positions) over the past two seasons and are even stronger this year.

“Goalkeeper is a crucial position and David is a very good player.”

For once, fortune fell favourably for Button and he ended up first choice as the Bees won promotion from League One at the end of his first season and reached the play-off semi-finals at the end of his second season.

The Brentford fans website bcfctalk was full of praise for the stopper, saying: “He was very much our first point of attack as well as our last line of defence and his quick and accurate distribution played a massive part on our overall style of play and freedom of expression.”

The website added: “He sometimes failed to deal effectively with crosses and he could also use his physique better as he is an enormous man, but he was utterly reliable and often quite brilliant and he won us numerous points with some incredible saves.”

Ahead of the 2015-16 season, at a pre-season training camp in Portugal, Button spoke about all of the club’s ‘keepers being put through their paces by goalkeeping coach Simon Royce, a one-time Albion loanee ‘keeper, and how he wanted to maintain his run of form.

“I need to find that level of consistency now for me,” he said. “I feel like I had quite a few good games last season but there were a few where I wanted to do better. I am aiming to keep my standards high in every minute of every game this season.”

He remained first choice in 2015-16, making 47 appearances, but talks on a new contract broke down. He came in for a bit of a backlash on social media when he decided to move on to west London rivals Fulham instead but he told getwestlondon: “It’s football. Probably in their eyes it’d have been nicer for me to move on to a different club. It is what it is.

“Hopefully they remember the good times and what I did for the club. I’ve got a great respect for the fans and for the way they treated me while I was there.

Fulham custodian

“I had a great three years at Brentford but felt it was time for a change and the opportunity to come here arose and it was something that interested me.”

Button had the support of manager Slavisa Jokanovic at Fulham but gradually lost the backing of the supporters to the extent he was jeered at Craven Cottage.

Supporter Dan Smith did a detailed analysis of where he thought things went wrong on fulhamfocus.com. “Having narrowly missed out on promotion in the playoffs, Button signed off his Brentford career as a good keeper at this level and someone highly regarded by the Bees faithful,” wrote Smith. “His shot stopping one of the best in the league with a very strong ‘long’ kick.”

Button kept a clean sheet on the opening day of the 2016-17 season and Smith said: “He looked decisive, confident and capable. But something happened gradually as the season developed.”

He maintained the ‘keeper’s form slowly deteriorated and blamed the way he was being managed rather than the player himself. “He looks very uncomfortable with the ball at his feet and isn’t helped by the lack of movement from the deeper players making it very difficult for him to pick someone out,” wrote Smith. “Mistake after mistake giving the ball away clearly damaged his confidence because mistakes in possession led to poor keeping errors, letting in shots he should be saving and would have saved at Brentford.”

Interestingly, with echoes of what Roberto De Zerbi has said of Steele and Bart Verbruggen, Jokanovic did blame himself rather than Button, saying he trusted the ‘keeper and had full confidence in him.

“It’s my responsibility sometimes. I put my keepers in some sort of trouble. We play a bit different and I want to start playing from the keeper.

“It’s more simple to kick the ball to the strikers as it’d give him more opportunity to be comfortable in the goal.

“He has all my confidence. Sometimes, when he makes a mistake it’s partly my responsibility as well.”

Nevertheless, eventually Button lost his starting spot to Marcus Bettinelli.

The midfield pivot in Albion’s rise to the Premier League

DALE STEPHENS spent nearly seven years at the Albion and was a pivotal cog in the club’s rise from the Championship to the Premier League.

He got his first taste of life at a big club playing alongside Adam Lallana and Dean Hammond….for Southampton!

That was back in 2011 when Saints won promotion from League One as runners up behind the Albion although he was an unused sub when Saints left Withdean on St George’s Day with all three points from a last gasp 2-1 win.

Stephens had gone on loan at St Mary’s from Oldham Athletic to cover an injury to Morgan Sneiderlin. “It was a strange one actually, there were only six or seven weeks left of the season,” he told the Albion matchday programme.

“Oldham weren’t really in any fear of going down or making the play-offs, so when Southampton came in for me, I was allowed to leave.”

The loanee played in six of the final 10 games of the season, making his debut against future employer Charlton Athletic alongside Lallana and Hammond.

“I looked at it almost as a trial period for being at a big club,” he said. “It was a chance for me to showcase myself. Playing for a club like Southampton at that level, with the players they had, was good for my experience and I really enjoyed being in a big-club environment.

“It was a good experience but just a shame that it was cut short by the season coming to an end.”

Explaining that everything was a level above what he’d previously been used to, Stephens added: “I didn’t feel out of place, though. I felt comfortable in that environment and it gave me the belief and the confidence that I could reach the next level.”

That didn’t turn out to be with Southampton, because his next club turned out to be the Addicks, where Chris Powell was building a side to try to get back into the Championship. Stephens found them to be similar to Saints, and like in his stint in Hampshire, he once again became a League One promotion-winner.

“I had a great first season there, helping the club win the League One title,” he recalled.

He then established himself as a Championship player before switching to the Albion in January 2014 when Andrew Crofts was ruled out by injury.

It was Nathan Jones, the former Albion player who had returned to assist Oscar Garcia, who recommended the move for Stephens, having seen him close-up when working as a coach at Charlton.

“Dale was one I recommended very strongly to the club and staked my reputation on, really,” he told the Argus. “When I was at Charlton, I saw Dale in probably three or four training sessions and a friendly at Welling and I knew then he could play at the highest level.”

Garcia needed little convincing and told the newspaper: “He’s a midfielder who can do everything and he does it all well. He’s got great physical capacity, a very good strike, he gets into the opposition box, and he is aggressive without the ball.”

It would be fair to say he was something of a Marmite player for many fans, often accused of being too slow and favouring a sideways pass. I’d say I wasn’t a fan at first but grew to appreciate his importance to the way the side played.

By his own admission, Stephens said: “With the sort of player I am, I’m not going to get fans on the edge of their seat. I’m not going to be a crowd pleaser, but I know my job and the levels I need to hit.”

Credit to him that his time at the club actually spanned the reigns of four different managers: Garcia; Sami Hyypia – although injuries prevented him appearing under him; Chris Hughton, who successfully paired him with Beram Kayal, and the early part of the Graham Potter era which saw him partner Dutchman Davy Pröpper.

Stephens’ arrival pretty much put the tin hat on the progress Rohan Ince had been making as a defensive midfielder with the Albion and, together with Kayal, he formed the key midfield duo as Albion sought to climb from the Championship under Chris Hughton.

A rare goal from Dale Stephens, this one away to West Ham

Once the promised land had been reached, Pröpper took over from Kayal but Stephens retained his place, proving a few doubters wrong about his ability to play at the higher level.

It was only with the emergence of Yves Bissouma as the consummate holding midfielder that Stephens found himself gradually edged out.

Born in Bolton on 12 June 1989, Stephens was football daft from an early age and although he had a try-out at Manchester City when he was 12, nothing further came of it.

After his final year at Ladybridge High School, he went onto a building site to do plastering and joinery.

But the coach of North Walkden, the local side for whom he was playing weekend football, wrote to Bury asking if they would take him on trial. After impressing in a work-out involving 28 triallists in front of youth team coach Chris Casper, he was invited back on a six-week trial basis.

Young Dale at Bury

“After two weeks, I played for the reserves and was offered a two-year scholarship,” Stephens explained. “I then became a first-year pro, making my debut as a sub against Peterborough, and never looked back. I was actually a striker when I joined but was quickly converted to a midfielder and I went on to play 12 first team games.”

Out of contract in 2008, he had the opportunity to step up a league and join Oldham Athletic. When game time was limited in his first season with them, he had loan spells with Droylsden, Hyde United and Rochdale, where he played alongside Will Buckley.

Back at Boundary Park, he became a regular for 18 months, in a side managed by former Brighton loanee striker Paul Dickov, and when Oldham visited Withdean in the 2010-11 season, a matchday programme article drew attention to him. “He is a big player for us in midfield,” wrote contributor Gavin Browne, sports editor of the Oldham Advertiser. “He has a great range of passing and has the ability to play at a higher level.”

A serious ankle ligament injury sustained when Albion beat bottom-of-the-table Yeovil 2-0 on 25 April 2014 sidelined him for 10 months but he returned to play a part in helping Hughton’s relegation-threatened side maintain their Championship status in 2015.

The promotion-deciding match at Middlesbrough in May 2016 will live long in the memory of those who saw it and witnessed referee Mike Dean’s controversial dismissal of Stephens four minutes after he’d brought the Albion back level with a narrow-angled header.

Once Brighton finally got to show what they could do amongst the elite, Stephens declared: “I was always confident of competing at this level but the more you play the more confident you become and the more belief you get.”

He ended up playing 99 Premier League games for the Seagulls out of a total of 223 appearances and perhaps as a mark of respect when he finally left the club for Burnley in September 2020, chairman Tony Bloom said: “He was key in both our promotion from the Championship and in establishing the club in the Premier League. 

“Albion fans will have great memories of Dale as a regular in the midfield in that promotion-winning campaign, and also for the way he comfortably adapted to life in the Premier League – where he has been a model of consistency.”

His last game for Brighton saw him wear the captain’s armband in a 4-0 Carabao Cup win over Portsmouth.

Things didn’t pan out as expected when he moved to Burnley. Due to injury, he was limited to 14 appearances in two seasons, and he told talkSPORT’s Sunday Session programme: “It was disappointing on both sides. When I initially went there I was excited for the challenge, but for whatever reason it didn’t work for me or the football club.

“It probably sums my time up there, but I found out on Twitter, of all places, that I wouldn’t be getting a new contract.”

Stephens expected to find a new club, probably at Championship level, who would be interested in using his experience, and although he came close to joining Middlesbrough, and there was some interest from Watford and West Brom, nothing materialised.

“I’d played in the Premier League for the last five years, but I understood I hadn’t played much for two,” he told Andy Naylor of The Athletic. “I thought people would see the reasons behind it and that I’d get the opportunity to play at a club that wants to try to get promoted.”

Apart from being allowed to join in pre-season training at Brighton and spending six weeks with his former Bury captain Dave Challinor at Bury, he trained alone to keep up his fitness level, but, when he was unable to get fixed up with a club, in March 2023 he announced his retirement from playing.

Ongoing problems with the ankle injury suffered during his time at Brighton also contributed to his decision to retire.

In his interview with Naylor, he said he aimed to take the UEFA B licence course to try to become a coach, having spent time out following ankle surgery watching Sean Dyche’s managerial methods, as well as opposing bosses.