Brighton and Hove Albion chief executive Paul Barber has admitted that the club will stick to the same approach with their next manager after Graham Potter joined Chelsea last week.
The Seagulls allowed Potter the chance to speak to the Blues - a policy that has stayed the same at the South Coast club throughout Tony Bloom's time at the club. Brighton would go onto receive £20million in compensation for Potter, who penned a five-year deal at Stamford Bridge.
It brings an end to Potter's three-year stay at the AMEX Stadium, with the 47-year-old guiding the Seagulls to their highest-ever Premier League finish last season. Despite losing one of the most exciting English coaches in the game, Barber believes they wouldn't change anything with their contract policy if they could turn back time.
Barber told The Athletic: "Football clubs are not prisons. We are not in a position to hold employees against their will.
"What we try to do as much as we can is protect ourselves with contracts. Contracts, we hope, will always be respected, but where people have an outstanding opportunity and they feel that it’s better for them, their careers, their families, then we’ve got an open mind."
Brighton placed their former technical director Dan Ashworth on gardening leave for four months from February to June until multi-million-pound compensation covering his notice period was agreed between the clubs over his move to Newcastle United. He has since oversaw moves for Alexander Isak, Sven Botman and Nick Pope to St James' Park as the Magpies aim for a top-six place.
Barber added: "Obviously, we don’t want to lose our best people and we make it as difficult as possible for people to leave and for people to take our staff, but in certain situations, we have to be realistic that it will happen.
"And in that scenario, we either protect ourselves with contracts that allow us to place people on gardening leave as we did with Dan, in order to protect our club or to guard against losing key people at key times, or protect ourselves financially. A combination of those at times is necessary.
"To tell someone that they can’t speak to another prospective employer, in my opinion and Tony’s (owner-chairman Tony Bloom) opinion, only breeds the kind of behaviour where people go behind your back, they have secret meetings, and it comes out and it’s a bigger story, it’s more disruptive, it’s potentially more damaging, it unsettles more staff.
"People in our club know that we have a culture where we want people to do well and progress and it’s up to us to make sure we’ve got good people coming in behind them to keep the progress that we are making ongoing."
