Discussing Roberto De Zerbi’s start to life as Brighton manager, Brentford boss Thomas Frank mused that “it must be quite nice coming into a well-run machine”.
De Zerbi has been parachuted in at the Amex in what is a rare position of luxury for an incoming manager: not under cover of nightfall and a hail of bullets but amid blue skies and sunshine. His task is not one of regeneration or rescue, but of continuity and subtle improvement, the Italian looking to build on the success that effectively earned his predecessor, Graham Potter, the Chelsea job.
But if Frank’s assessment sounded like a snide dig, it was not — indeed, it is not difficult to imagine another manager saying the same about whoever succeeds the Dane in the Brentford dugout, when he eventually departs the club.
Friday night’s meeting of the two sides at the Gtech Community Stadium will be between two of the best-run clubs in the country and two of English football’s great success stories.
Brighton were still in League One little more than a decade ago, having sunk as low as the fourth tier following their last relegation from the top flight back in 1983.
Brentford, meanwhile, played top-tier football last term for the first time since just after the Second World War and were themselves a League One outfit as recently as 2014.
Neither have much pedigree at this level: prior to their current stints, the pair had spent only nine seasons combined in the top division of English football across their entire existences of well over 100 years apiece.
The rise of both clubs stands as an example to those in the lower divisions, of virtually any historical size, of not only what might be achieved, but how innovation, bravery and, crucially, sustainability might be rewarded.
“They’ve shown that over the years that they’re running a good football business,” Frank said ahead of the game. “They have hired [De Zerbi] because of his trademarks, in terms of also wanting to play progressive, possession-based football.
“He inherits a good squad, a well-drilled team, and now he needs to put his own ideas in.”
The question for both, after periods of success virtually unparalleled in their respective histories, is quite where the ceiling lies.
Brighton, to be clear, are further down the road than Brentford, now into a sixth successive season in the Premier League and punching higher than ever.
De Zerbi’s two League games so far have harboured just a point, but the Seagulls might easily have taken six from those meetings with Liverpool and Tottenham and even so, they are seventh, playing some of the League’s most attractive football, within striking distance of the top four.
Cracking even the ‘big six’ this term, before Newcastle almost inevitably make it a ‘big seven’, would be their greatest achievement yet.
Brentford, meanwhile, have work to do to become established in the division and are yet to pass some of the tests that routinely fall upon those competing below the Premier League’s very elite, namely the poaching of star players (Brighton have lost Ben White, Yves Bissouma, Marc Cucurella and Dan Burn in the last 18 months alone) or, more topically, perhaps even their manager.
Still, it is a measure of the ease with which they have adapted to life in the top flight that their current run of three games without a victory feels like a marked dip in form. In reality, they have enjoyed a strong start, sit comfortably in mid-table, on the same number of points as Liverpool, and would climb into eighth with a win tonight.
