Former Gunners legend Liam Brady was Brighton & Hove Albion manager for just 23 months. Despite a vastly limited budget, attendances rose by an average of 3,000 per game under him, but he resigned in late 1995 in protest about how the club was being run.
However, Seagulls fans remain eternally grateful to ‘Chippy’, because without his influence, the club might actually have ceased to exist.
With Brighton heading into the fourth tier of English football and facing life away from the Goldstone Ground, their home for 95 years, Brady, who’d resigned as manager six months earlier, was part of a consortium which guaranteed that Brighton would continue to play at the Goldstone for another season.
The Irishman offered to put up £40,000 of his own money to ensure the deal went through, which it duly did. The club was evicted at the end of the 1996/97 campaign, but Brady's place in Brighton supporters’ hearts was assured.
Unsurprisingly, the links between the two clubs were strengthened during Brady’s spell as Brighton manager, and in the 18 years from 1996 when he was our Head of Youth Development and Academy Director.
Gunners winger Mark Flatts, who broke into our first-team during the 1992/93 season, was the first player that Brady brought on loan to Brighton. Arriving at the Goldstone Ground in January 1994, Brady converted Flatts into a centre forward, and he impressed the Brighton fans with his skill on the ball. Despite only scoring once in 10 appearances, he played a huge part in helping Albion move away from the Division Two relegation zone.
Ironically, Flatts’ replacement in the Brighton line-up was our Scottish striker Paul Dickov. The diminutive forward had been scoring goals aplenty in the reserves at Highbury and he brought that form into Albion’s first team, netting five times in eight games. Brady’s fulsome praise for his striker (“His boundless enthusiasm for the game is a breath of fresh air”) was reflected in Brighton fans’ adoration for the forward.
Dickov – who later went on to star for Manchester City and Scotland - became an instant favourite with the Goldstone crowd despite the fact that his stay in Hove was brief. A striker crisis at his parent club saw George Graham recall him early and a month after returning, Dickov was sat on the bench as we won the European Cup Winners’ Cup with a 1-0 win over Parma.
Perhaps the most successful of all loanees at Brighton was midfielder Steve Sidwell, a Brady favourite from the Arsenal academy. Steve Coppell signed the 19-year-old in November 2002, and Sidwell netted five times in 12 games, with the highlight being a brace against Burnley in his final appearance. Burnley had led 2-0 as the match entered the 90th minute, only for Sidwell to score twice in the dying seconds to rescue a precious point.
After a career at Reading, Chelsea and Aston Villa, Sidwell returned to Brighton and played a vital part in their promotion push, which saw them finally reach the Premier League in 2017.
The seismic influence of Liam Brady, a hero to both Arsenal and Brighton fans, could be felt both on and off the pitch.
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Liam Brady: Adored in north and east London](https://www.arsenal.com/news/liam-brady-adored-north-and-east-london?utm_source=arsenaldotcom&utm_medium=embedded-article&utm_campaign=news)
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