Some 20 years before he became an Invincible, promising young central defender Martin Keown was loaned to Brighton & Hove Albion during the 1984/85 season to gain first-team experience.
Oxford-born Keown, who’d risen to prominence in our youth team at the same time as Tony Adams, David Rocastle, Niall Quinn and Martin Hayes, was already fiercely competitive and driven to succeed, but manager Don Howe believed that “experience in a competitive environment will do the young man a power of good,”, and so it proved.
The Seagulls had been relegated from the top-flight at the end of 1982/83, despite reaching the FA Cup final, and manager Chris Cattlin faced a tough - and ultimately fruitless - assignment in trying to steer Brighton back.
Keown has occasionally made reference to his 23 league matches at the Goldstone Ground. “Although the second tier - much as it is now - is a tough and unforgiving environment, I needed that experience,” he said.
The 18-year-old England youth international made his debut away to Manchester City in February 1985. It was an inauspicious start, with Brighton losing 2-0 but Keown impressed, and in two loan spells, he played 23 times over the course of six months, scoring one goal and was even named the Second Division Young Player of the Month award.
During his time on the south coast, he lived with physiotherapist Malcolm Stuart and his family, whom Keown said “made me feel very much at home.” Keown still had Highbury very much on his mind though, and in the Brighton matchday programme, he spoke warmly of Terry Murphy, the scout who took him to north London. “He was very good to me. I was only 15 when I joined Arsenal as an apprentice and in digs in north London. It was all quite a change from life in Oxford.”
Though Cattlin would have loved to keep the player at the Goldstone Ground permanently, Keown returned to Arsenal, and was given his first-team debut in November 1985 in a 0-0 draw away at West Bromwich Albion. He became a regular that season, filling in when needed for Tommy Caton and David O’Leary, and playing alongside Adams for the first time, as Howe’s side struggled for consistency.
His formative period at Brighton had shown the youngster that a football career is not always linear, and in the 1986 close season when George Graham took over, Keown was sold to Aston Villa, before moving to Everton in 1989. Graham finally brought Keown back to Highbury in the 1992/93 season.
Now a high-performing ball-playing centre-back, he went onto win trophies galore under Arsene Wenger in the late 1990s and early 2000s, leaving Highbury after our unbeaten 2003/04 season. Keown played nearly 450 times for the club and won 43 England caps - but it all began from his early playing days on the south coast.
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