Before Brighton’s defeat on Saturday in Steven Gerrard’s first game in charge of Aston Villa, Graham Potter reflected on his rival’s work at previous club Rangers.
The Brighton head coach said: “I think he’s done really, really well, it’s not easy when you are a top player, like Steven was, to take a step into management. We have to understand that just because you used to be a top player doesn’t mean that automatically you will be a top manager.”
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That last remark applies to Sami Hyypia, another Liverpool legend and a predecessor of Potter at Brighton.
Owner-chairman Tony Bloom has appointed five men to lead his team. Four of them have worked. One did not — Hyypia.
Gus Poyet guided Brighton to the League One title in 2010-11 and into the Championship play-offs two seasons later. They reached those play-offs again the following season under Oscar Garcia.
Hyypia lasted only six months as Garcia’s successor, resigning in December 2014 with Brighton in the second tier’s relegation zone, before Chris Hughton rescued them, delivered automatic promotion to the Premier League in 2016-17 and then kept them in the top flight for two seasons.
Potter is building on that solid foundation, developing a more progressive style of play over the past two and a half seasons with a younger, more mobile squad.
So, what went wrong for Hyypia at a club that has otherwise sustained success for the past 11 years?
Speaking to former players and staff involved in his ill-fated reign, a picture emerges of an innovator who suffered from poor recruitment, bad luck and not being firm enough, a situation we can now call Solskjaer Syndrome.
Hyypia was unveiled on June 6, 2014 at Brighton’s smart training complex in Lancing, the club’s third foreign manager in a row to come armed with a high-class playing pedigree.
Brighton was Poyet’s first job in management, following spells as an assistant at Swindon Town, Leeds United and Tottenham Hotspur. A 26-cap Uruguay international midfielder, he played for Tottenham and Chelsea in the Premier League and Real Zaragoza in La Liga.
Garcia, a four-time La Liga-winning attacking midfielder with Barcelona and disciple of Johan Cruyff, arrived at Brighton after steering Maccabi Tel Aviv to their first Israeli Premier League title for 10 years.
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Hyypia had the most impressive playing CV of the lot. An imposing central defender, he won the Champions League (2004-05), UEFA Cup (2000-01), FA Cup (twice) and League Cup (twice) during a triumphant decade at Liverpool in which he made more than 300 appearances. He also earned 105 Finland caps.
He joined Brighton after his first spell in management at the Bundesliga’s Bayer Leverkusen, where his playing career had ended.
Sami Hyypia chatting to Mauricio Pochettino ahead of a League Cup match between Brighton and Tottenham (Photo: Ian Walton/Getty Images)Hyypia was initially in joint charge of Leverkusen with youth-team Sascha Lewandowski. The partnership qualified Leverkusen for the Champions League in 2012-13 by finishing third in the Bundesliga, behind Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund.
Hyypia assumed sole control the following year as Lewandowski stepped back down to the youth department.
He started well. Leverkusen were second at one stage but he was fired in the April after a mid-season slump of three wins in 12 league games, a 4-0 first-leg thrashing at home to Paris Saint-Germain in the last 16 of the Champions League and defeat at home to second division Kaiserslautern in the German Cup.
The way Hyypia’s reign ended in Germany was a taste of things to come at Brighton.
The writing was on the wall even before Hyypia’s appointment.
Garcia revealed in an interview with The Athletic a year ago why he resigned straight after Brighton had been beaten 6-2 on aggregate by Derby County in the Championship play-offs in May 2014.
“I was sure that what we were preparing to do would not be successful,” he said. “The big concern was we were going to sell the best players, and I was thinking the players coming in would not be at the right level for Brighton to fight for promotion.”
He was right.
Argentinian striker Leonardo Ulloa joined Leicester in the Premier League for £8 million, having scored 23 goals in 50 league appearances over 18 months under the Spaniard and predecessor Poyet.
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Winger Will Buckley was reunited with Poyet in the top flight at Sunderland five days after the start of the next season. Loan signing Jesse Lingard went back at Manchester United. Experienced former England and West Ham central defender Matt Upson also moved to Leicester.
Republic of Ireland left-back Stephen Ward, a mainstay under Garcia while on loan from Wolves, was set to sign permanently until Burnley stepped in with their offer of Premier League football.
Signings under then-recruitment chief David Burke, including DR Congo midfielder Nzuzi Toko and Ulloa’s journeyman replacement Chris O’Grady, were underwhelming. O’Grady had spent most of his career up to that point in the lower divisions with clubs including Rotherham United, Oldham Athletic and Rochdale.
Hyypia began his first game in charge, a 1-0 loss to Sheffield Wednesday at the Amex Stadium, with a strike force of O’Grady and debutant Shamir Fenelon, an academy product who had just celebrated his 20th birthday.
As one insider put it: “What was he supposed to do? He didn’t have a chance.”
Bloom, reflecting on Hyypia’s reign in August in an interview with the Leaders In Sport Business podcast, agreed the recruitment that summer was “poor”.
It was no coincidence that Burke was also sacked by Bloom that December, two days after Hyypia’s own departure.
Hyypia suffered a slap in the face before a ball had been kicked.
At the end of June 2014, three weeks after his appointment, Brighton announced Sammy Lee, a member of the coaching staff at Liverpool when Hyypia was a player there, would be joining the club as his assistant, with Hyypia’s former Finland team-mate Antti Niemi coming in as goalkeeping coach.
Hyypia, speaking enthusiastically to the club website, declared: “Sammy’s and Antti’s coaching credentials are first rate. Sammy has played and coached at the top level of football domestically and with England.”
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However Lee, who was also part of England’s coaching staff under Sven-Goran Eriksson at the time, did a sudden U-turn, joining Premier League side Southampton instead to work with their new manager Ronald Koeman.
Brighton chief executive Paul Barber described Lee’s change of heart as “extremely disappointing for the club and Sami”.
Bloom said: “We were unlucky in a few things. He was going to bring in Sammy Lee. Literally on his way down (to sign), Southampton made a bigger offer. He went there.
“He (Hyypia) didn’t have a No 2. He wasn’t experienced with the Championship.”
A month went by before Nathan Jones stepped up from first-team coach to be Hyypia’s assistant.
A former Brighton defender, Jones spoke Spanish and had been Garcia’s No.2. Hyypia felt comfortable working with him but had a historic bond with Lee from their years together at Liverpool.
Out on the training ground, Hyypia embraced an unusual routine implemented initially by Garcia.
Elliott Bennett, a winger Brighton sold to Norwich City in 2011 then re-signed on loan from them under Hyypia, tells The Athletic: “He was very different. I’d never experienced anything quite like training in the evening the night before a night game. It’s not something in England you tend to come across from managers.
“That was one of his things. He wanted to get you to train the day before each game at the same time (as the game), so your body was used to it. Playing in England for all my career, it was always training at half-ten (in the morning).”
It wasn’t only training times that were different from the norm under Hyypia. His tactics for second-tier football seven years ago were new as well.
Goalkeeper David Stockdale, who followed Niemi from Fulham down to Brighton that summer, says: “We tried to play out, a little bit like Graham Potter’s way of playing, but in the Championship before that really kicked off, so he was a little bit ahead of his time in his thinking.
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“He was very forthcoming about how he wanted to play and it was quite new. Now with Marcelo Bielsa and Graham Potter and people playing football like that, it’s quite funny to say he was one of the first I came across with that style.”
Hyypia had a tough spell as Brighton manager in the 2014-15 Championship (Photo: PA Images)Bennett believes the tactics weren’t the right fit to prosper in the English second division.
He says: “The formation was something I’d not played under before — very much a 4-3-2-1, kind of a Christmas tree shape with the midfielders playing like full-backs basically.
“It was quite a complex system and one that I’m sure has worked for other managers in different leagues across the world but the Championship is a league of its own, really, not like any other.
“Maybe it was a bit too extravagant for the Championship, one of the reasons that it didn’t work out. You only have to look at the teams that have been successful over the last five or six years in the Championship, it’s been very much 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3. They seem to be the formations that get teams over the line.”
Brighton were a nearly team under Hyypia, with Joao Teixeira impressing as an attacking midfielder. Hyypia used his contacts at Liverpool to sign the then 21-year-old Portuguese prospect on a season-long loan.
Hyypia’s side were 13th in the 24-team division at the September international break, after Lewis Dunk equalised in second-half stoppage-time with the second of both goals in a 2-2 home draw with Charlton Athletic.
Hopes of building on that sound start of seven points from five games evaporated as that Charlton draw began a run of 11 league matches without a victory, albeit the sequence included six draws and three of the four defeats were by a single goal.
Stockdale tells The Athletic: “The performance levels were actually very good, we just couldn’t get the results. At the right club at the right time, he would have had a lot more time, maybe more funds.”
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Beating Wigan Athletic in early November, followed by draws with Blackburn Rovers and Norwich, provided temporary respite but Hyypia resigned in Christmas week after one point from the next four matches left Brighton in the relegation zone.
They’d won once in 18 league games, with half of their six victories during Hyypia’s 26 games in charge coming against lower-division opponents Cheltenham Town, Swindon and Burton Albion in the League Cup.
Bloom said: “I thought his experience of being in England for a long time with Liverpool would be helpful but there is that big difference between the Premier League and the Championship.
“But I don’t think we were as bad as others may make out in the first half of the season.”
Despite the struggles on the pitch, Hyypia was popular with the players and respected within the club.
Stockdale says when he signed, “I got a really good vibe, very relaxed. He was very calm, explained his points, tried to coach a lot to get what he wanted, knew what he wanted from his tactics and believed in them.
“Even towards the back end of his time, he was still very calm, wanted to do the right things, play the right way.”
One source feels Hyypia was too calm for his own good, saying: “He was such a nice man. He had one level. Chris Hughton always came across as a nice bloke, but, when he went, he went. The players knew then that he meant it.”
Hyypia maintained his dignity throughout his time in charge, even when the atmosphere turned toxic during his final game at the Amex Stadium — a 1-0 loss to Millwall.
Darren Bent shows his frustration in Hyypia’s final Brighton home match, against Millwall in December 2014 (Photo: PA Images)The 1-1 draw at Wolves eight days later which brought his brief tenure to an end summed up Hyypia’s misfortunes.
His team led from the 10th minute, through on-loan former England striker Darren Bent, surviving with 10 men following a 58th-minute red card shown to Bruno Saltor until conceding an 88th-minute equaliser.
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Bennett says: “He had a clear plan and how he wanted to achieve it. I had nothing but respect for him. He gave me an opportunity, after a big injury, to get out and play some football.
“He didn’t have to bring me back. I was thankful for that. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. You can have as many ideas you want, sometimes it just doesn’t work.”
(Top image: PA Images)
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