Brighton CEO Paul Barber has revealed how Dan Ashworth helped select his successor with the Seagulls ahead of his move to Newcastle United. The technical director's appointment on Tyneside was confirmed in May last year following months of intense speculation.
Ashworth's exit was the first of several high-profile departures from Brighton, with Marc Cucurella and head coach Graham Potter both moving to Chelsea at the start of the new season. Wantaway star Leandro Trossard was then sold to Arsenal in the mid-season window, yet Roberto De Zerbi's side are on course for their best-ever Premier League finish.
Brighton promoted David Weir as Ashworth's successor having already identified the former centre-back as the ideal candidate to succeed the technical director. While accepting it was a 'setback' to lose the 52-year-old in the manner they did, Barber is confident the Seagulls were well-placed to handle his exit and has backed Weir to deliver in the role in his 'own way'.
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He told the High Performance Podcast: "First of all, Dan is one of if not the best technical director that I've worked with. David Weir who is now his successor is going to be as good in his own way. Dan and I used to talk openly about what we would do if he were to leave, because again if you are building succession plans, you've almost got to understand who the current technical director thinks the good up and coming technical directors are in order to get the best succession plan in place.
"We talked about Weir and his background as a top-level player for Everton, Rangers and Scotland, and we talked about the role he was doing for us at the time which was a loans manager role. We talked about his education, and we realised pretty quickly that Dan's successor was in the building.
"It was just a case of making sure we helped David as much as possible to realise that potential, and when the time came and it did come when Dan moved to Newcastle, that not only was David ready to step up into the role but wanted to. We gave David about six months as acting technical director, it was a chance for us to see if what we saw in him was going to come to pass, and also for David to have a good look at the role and see if he liked it. Thankfully, we liked him and he liked us and therefore our successor to Dan was there.
"But internally, we talked very positively about having the talent in the building to overcome the setback of Dan deciding to leave for Newcastle. We would have preferred he didn't leave at that moment, but he did. You can't necessarily predict the outcome in those situations, but you can actually prepare for it and we did."
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