One of Ben’s greatest qualities throughout his career has been his fitness levels and availability, so it was a shock to the system for him last season to be injured for three months and miss 22 games.
He had missed only seven league games during the previous three seasons combined, so he was determined to return strongly when he did put the injury behind him.
“That’s how I saw it over the summer,” he confirms. “I kind of had my rest during the season, so that’s why I didn’t want time off in the close season. I came back towards the end of last season and was getting minutes, I was ready to go so I just wanted to crack on from that, get back and keep going.
“I managed to get a couple of 90 minutes at the end of last season, and by then we weren’t playing for the title, so I was using it to be as prepared as possible. “I think I had one day off after the last game and then started again with my training.”
Another part of pre-season that Ben said he greatly enjoyed, was welcoming the new players to the club. Among them, of course, was a familiar face in striker Viktor Gyokeres, who had been with Ben at Brighton from January 2018 after signing from IF Brommapojkarna in Sweden, until January 2021, when he left for Coventry City.
“Yeah, I know Viktor really well,” Ben says of his fellow 27-year-old.
“We played together at Brighton for a long time, maybe three or four years, and I could tell even then that he was always destined for greatness. From the moment he came to Brighton, he was brought into the under-21s group and you could see he had something special about him at that age.
“It was always me and him going up from the youth team to go and train with the first team all the time, so we spent a lot of time together.
“We never really broke into the first team consistently there, but we were always on the edges of it when we were young.
“It’s funny how things happen because we both went out on loan at different places, and now of course we’ve ended up at the same place after taking very different paths.
“I spoke to him a little bit before he signed, but there was a lot going on so I didn’t want to bother him. All I said to him was that he would love it here, but I think he knew that already.”