Hurzeler: 'We've thrown the young players into the ice water'

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Albion boss pleased with young players' progression this campaign.

Charlie Hanson

2025-05-18T07:00+01:00

Carlos Baleba has made 30 Premier League appearances under Fabian Hurzeler so far this campaign. 📷 by Paul Hazlewood.

Fabian Hurzeler believes that his young players have had to be thrown in at the deep end this season, or in his words, ‘throw them in the ice water’.

The German has had to contend with injuries to key senior players in his team throughout the campaign, while the average age of his squad is the second youngest in the Premier League (24.4 years).

“That’s the way of Brighton and Hove Albion,” Fabian said. “Of course, we need to be patient with young players and we try to get them closer and closer to the team step by step. But this season we had to do it quite fast.

“In German there’s a sentence “Throw them in the ice water”, so in the cold water they have to swim, find a way to deal with it. And that’s something that we are really impressed about in my young squad, how they work together, how they find a way to win Premier League games.

“We suffered bad experiences with being 2-0 up in the 85th minutes and weren’t able to win the games, we had bad experiences during the season, bad results. But they always find a way together, they always stick together and worked hard on the training pitch and improved and improved and improved.

“That’s something really special, that’s something that I don’t take for granted, and that’s why I’m very grateful to be their coach and I will continue, together with my staff, to give them the environment where they can improve. Because they’re still not finished with their development, there’s still a lot of things to improve.

“The the message I send to them daily is, ‘Stay grounded, stay humble. It doesn’t matter anything if you’ve played 30 Premier League games. It’s about, in the end, having 600, 700, like James Milner.’ That's the goal for you. That’s why I try to push them every day.”