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Adams on promotion success and upsetting the odds

Fans of both the Albion and this weekend’s visitors, Leicester City, have good memories of Micky Adams. The Yorkshireman managed both clubs to promotions, and in Brighton’s case the team he built at Withdean Stadium during his first spell in charge laid the foundations for further successes. He left to join Leicester after winning the Third Division title and experienced relegation from the Premier League as assistant to Dave Bassett then promotion back to it as manager in 2003.

By Nick Szczepanik • 19 November 2019

By Bennett Dean
Micky Adams celebrates winning the Division Three title.

Which promotion gave him more satisfaction? “I honestly don’t think you can separate them,” he says. “Any promotion on a manager’s CV is quite an achievement. The two promotions were in different circumstances but I can’t say that one was better than the other.”

Micky took over as Albion manager from Jeff Wood in April 1999, towards the end of the club’s two-year exile at Gillingham. The 2000-01 Third Division championship trophy, clinched on May 1 2001 with an intensely-fought 1-0 win over title rivals Chesterfield, was the club’s first silverware since 1965 and marked the first solid step back upwards for the club since the sale of the Goldstone.

To win that promotion, Micky had brought in a number of players who had proved themselves in his Fulham promotion side of 1996-7, or under him at Brentford the following season. They were players he knew he could rely on, and he also signed Paul Rogers and a certain Bobby Zamora. It was a team that the fans loved for its strong characters, togetherness and work ethic.

By Bennett Dean
Albion's players celebrate winning the Division Three title.

“The core of the side were boys I’d taken from Fulham – Darren Freeman, Danny Cullip, Paul Watson, Richard Carpenter, Paul Brooker,” Micky says. “Charlie Oatway I’d had at Brentford. We had had some success together before and they added quality to good players who were already at the club, like Kerry Mayo and Gary Hart. And then we added Paul Rogers and later Bobby Zamora, who were both very important to us.

“You will rarely achieve anything in the game unless you get a group of individuals together who are like-minded, share the beliefs and want to work as hard as they possibly can to achieve it. And nobody could ever, ever accuse that Brighton team of lacking effort or enthusiasm for the game.

“At times the quality may not have been great but they made up for that with will-power, drive and sheer bloody-mindedness. You have to give them as much credit as you can. I make no false pretences about myself as a player – I was a hod-carrier for the stars like Shearer and Le Tissier at Southampton for instance and I took that into management. If we were ever going to do anything, we needed to be fit and organised and I tried my best to get my teams to be like that.”

He also enjoyed the support of then-chairman Dick Knight and the fans, who responded to the ‘Keep the faith’ message with which he signed off his programme columns. “I should have copyrighted that!” he says. “I used to sign off at Fulham with that because when I took over they were 91st in the Football League, and when you’re near the bottom, that’s all you’ve got. And if supporters do get behind you and stay behind you even if things go wrong occasionally, it makes such a difference.

“Dick Knight was a fantastic chairman and God knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been around and the club will always owe him a debt of gratitude. He did a great bit of business to strike the deal to get Bobby Zamora on a permanent basis after what he showed he could do on loan and I was very fortunate to have him in my team when I did. Bobby was a man and you had to be to fit in with that group of players. They accepted criticism in the right way and if anything went wrong they put it right on the training ground on a Monday morning.”

By Paul Hazlewood
Bobby Zamora.

Zamora, now back with Albion as a club ambassador, went on to play for England and it amuses Micky that his quality was not more widely recognised while he was regularly hitting the back of the Withdean nets.

“Everybody said about Bobby ‘It’s all right him scoring goals in League Two but can he do it in League One?’ So he went up and showed that he could score goals in League One. Then once again there were doubters who said. ‘Yes, but maybe he’s not a Championship-level goalscorer’. But he scored goals there too and went on to score goals in the Premier League and the Europa League.

“There were always doubts about Bobby but I don’t know why. He had a great left foot, he got into good positions to score goals and he scored all different types of goals – headers, volleys, you name it. And he is very intelligent. You only become a Premier League player if you have that game intelligence.”

By Rex/Shutterstock
Micky Adams during his time at Leicester.

Micky left Albion in October 2001 when given the chance to coach in the Premier League at Leicester, and his time in the East Midlands was eventful. “When I joined I was going to be assistant manager and learn to deal with top-level players under Dave Bassett. But the club was built on quicksand, with a massive debt and enormous wages being paid to players who were under-performing.

“They eventually got relegated and I got the job. I think I had four games in the Premier League at the end of that season, including the final match at Filbert Street, and then took over formally in the Championship. They went into administration but, again, through it all, a group of players sticking together and believing in what they were doing, the community rallying around the club, we managed to get promoted.”

Micky also had to deal with two difficult non-football situations while with the Foxes. Several Leicester players were arrested on trumped-up charges of sexual assault during a warm-weather training trip to La Manga, and Dennis Wise broke the jaw of defender Callum Davidson after a row and was sacked by the club.

Micky, though, sticks up for Wise. “I felt I dealt with the fight he had with Callum Davidson in the correct manner, but the club wanted to sack him – possibly because he was on a lot of money at the time – and eventually they did. But I took him when I was at Coventry City and he did wonderful things there and the fans will speak well of him, although Leicester fans might not. That’s football.”

By Bennett Dean
Micky Adams on his second appointment as Albion manager.

His time at Coventry followed his resignation from the Leicester job in October 2004 and preceded his second spell at Brighton in 2008-09. Unfortunately, there was no promotion on this occasion and the spirit of his previous Brighton team was missing – as was Zamora, who had left for Tottenham. There were good results, such as the League Cup victory on penalties over newly-minted Manchester City, but not enough of them and he left in February 2009.

“Was it the right time to go back? Probably not, for various reasons. If you don’t get results you don’t stay anywhere very long, although of course we did get one very big result against City. But just having been successful the first time round didn’t mean I would be afforded time the second time round. Again, that’s football. But being asked to go back to a club you have managed before is great because it means that you had done something good the first time round. Port Vale also asked me back, of course.”

All this and more is recorded in his excellent autobiography, My Life In Football, co-written with a great friend of this column, Neil Moxley. It details with searing honesty his playing career at Gillingham, Coventry, Leeds, Southampton, Fulham, Swansea and Brentford as well as his managerial and coaching experiences at Fulham, Brentford, Nottingham Forest, Swansea City, Port Vale, Sheffield United and Sligo Rovers as well as the Seagulls and Foxes.

One of the colour photographs in the book shows Micky in front of the north stand at The Amex on a visit in his new role as a Premier League match delegate, which he fits in alongside football consultancy work. It was not something he had ever envisaged. “I never thought the Amex was going to happen,” he confesses. “I remember the marches and the meetings and for a long period it looked as if it was going nowhere. Then along came Tony Bloom and the rest is history.

“He has financed a fantastic stadium that all Brighton fans can feel proud of. I’m delighted to see both Brighton and Leicester where they are. For Brighton especially it seemed a long way away when I first arrived at the club, playing at Gillingham in the lowest tier.”

By Rex/Shutterstock
Albion face an in-form Leicester City side on Saturday.

Now, of course, the two clubs meet as Premier League equals although the table and the bookies make Leicester the favourites. “I don’t think there are any foregone conclusions in the Premier League,” Micky says. “Any team that turns up on the day can get a result. Norwich beating Manchester City proved that. But a very confident, hungry young Leicester side is a tough nut for any team. Brendan Rodgers has done a fantastic job and he has some great young players around a very experienced core in Jamie Vardy, Jonny Evans and Kasper Schmeichel – all good pros.

“So it will be a tough ask for Brighton. You can’t be predictable in the Premier League because rival teams will find you out and work out ways to beat you. Leicester will hustle and press high up the pitch with Vardy and the rest Brighton could be asking for trouble trying to play through the thirds as they have been doing but if that is Graham Potter’s philosophy then good luck.

“I thought Chris Hughton did a fantastic job keeping them in the Premier but Graham has come in and changed the way of playing and it will obviously take time. But the fans are certainly buying into it and that is one thing that you definitely need in that situation, so that is great for him.”