Elliott Bennett relives how Albion beat Southampton to title

Albion in the last season at 8,400-seat Withdean and Southampton at St Mary’s, playing to crowds which averaged out at 22,000 and rose to 31,000 in the run-in.

Remember when the Seagulls were 16 points clear and already champions as the South Coast rivals met at Withdean on Easter Saturday?

Remember some of the football Albion played under the guidance of Gus Poyet?

Their star wideman Elliott Bennett does – and always will.

“I’ll be telling that story when I’m 90 years old if I live that long,” he told The Argus on his way home from another rehab session at Blackburn Rovers, where he is getting over injury.

Albion lost 2-1 at home to Saints that day and it didn’t really matter to them.

The League One title was in the bag after Bennett’s super strike at Walsall seven days earlier added the exclamation mark to a 3-1 win.

Albion would have liked the season to have ended right then as they paraded an inflatable trophy at the Bescot Stadium.

A decade on, that tittle-winning campaign is fondly remembered by fans.

They recall the football Poyet’s men played - revolutionary for League One.

What they might not realise is the campaign was based on old-fashioned hard work around the playing fields of the University of Sussex in the summer of 2010.

Bennett said: “The foundations were set the season before when Gus came in. We ended that season really strongly.

“To this day, that summer was the hardest pre-season I’ve ever done in my life.

“We weren’t really renowned as a running team. We were more of a passing team.

“But I think doing that work brought everyone together straight away.

“We had a lot of young players, naive. We went into it with no expectations and we trusted everything the manager got us to do.

“There were no egos, no people pulling against what he was trying to do.

“I suppose we also had to be really fit to play the way we did.

“Ten years ago, there was none of this GPS vests and heart-rate belts monitoring everything.

“It was literally, ‘This is what we are doing today, get on with it’.

“The gaffer could see with his own eyes when you had done enough.

“When everyone’s tongues are hanging out of their mouths and everyone is on the floor, that’s enough for the day.

“We went to Portugal for a week. We played Sunderland there and we absolutely battered them.

“That was another moment when you think to yourselves, ‘We’re good’.

“The manager, Tano (Maurico Taricco) and Charlie (Oatway), the combination of what they brought to that group of players, I’ve not come across it again.”

Glenn Murray, Ashley Barnes and Chris Wood, on loan for most of the season, have all scored plenty of goals in the Premier League since then.

Bennett, Liam Bridcutt and Craig Noone all went on to good things and Gary Dicker is still going strong in Scotland.

Perhaps a better guide, though, of what Albion did that season is to look at the team they beat to top spot.

The final margin was only three points but it was 16 when Albion took the title and relaxed.

Saints’ team was built around current Albion star Adam Lallana, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Rickie Lambert, Morgan Schneiderlin and Jose Fonte.

Kelvin Davis was in goal and former Seagulls duo Dean Hammond and Dan Harding were regulars.

Bennett said: “It’s crazy when you look at those names.

“We were the underdogs and that suited us down to the ground.

“Brighton at the time, with Withdean Stadium, people didn’t take us too seriously and that was a big motivation.

“We went and did it our way and I take great pride in the way we upset the odds.

“Probably the salaries they were paying out would have been exponentially higher than we were earning and we went, ‘All that doesn’t matter, it’s 11 men v 11 men. We will take you on’ and we more than did that.”

Poyet felt it took some fans too long to tune into the more patient, possession-based football his team were playing and he certainly did not mind saying so.

But players who had struggled under predecessor Russell Slade were more than happy to go along with the plan.

Bennett recalled: “When you are at a club and the manager loses his job because of you really, or because of the team, you’ve got no right as a player when a new manager comes in wanting to do something different to have any apprehension.

“It wasn’t working for us doing it the old way so you have got to be open-minded.

“Thankfully, the football Gus wanted to play is common now but, in League One ten years ago, we were breaking the mould a bit.

“That caught a lot of teams unawares.

“We could obviously play through the lines, pass and move.

“We also had people like Ashley Barnes and Glenn Murray so, if it wasn’t working on a given day, we had another way.

“A massive driving force was the fact the owner had built this beautiful stadium befitting a Premier League club, which Brighton are now and I’m so happy about that.

“To get promoted and give that stadium Championship football was the least it deserved.”

Bennett describes the 3-0 win at Peterborough as “one of the most complete team performances I’ve been involved in” and also picks out the promotion clincher at home to Dagenham as a highlight.

But another game versus Southampton, at St Mary’s the previous season as Poyet took charge for the first time, also stands out in his memory.

He said: “I actually thought I played rubbish that day. It was on Sky and a new manager comes in and everyone wants to impress.

“The gaffer gave me a job to do. I had to stop one of their dangermen, Michail Antonio.

“I was always a winger, an attacking player, and I ended up doing a job for the team.

“I remember after the game the gaffer saying, ‘Forget who got man of the match, you were the reason we won that game today’.

“I left that game thinking it’s all about doing what you can for the team.”

Bennett departed at the end of 2010-11, bound for Prem new boys Norwich.

He had come close to making the move in January but chairman Tony Bloom said there was work still to do at Withdean.

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Bennett said: “I’ve got a lot of admiration for the owner and he called me up and said, ‘Elliott, look, I’m not selling you. We’ll have a good chat when I get back from Australia’ and I had to respect that.

“We went to Watford in the FA Cup and I was on the bench and had to warm up in front of the away fans.

“I remember thinking ‘Am I going to get pelters?’ but they were all singing my name.

“From that moment on, I wasn’t trying to pursue anything.

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“The affinity and affection I had for the fans was tremendous.

“True to the owner’s word, he got back from Australia, we sat down like gentlemen and he said we had to finish what we had started.

“He said, ‘If in the summer Norwich or another club are still around and they give us the money we think you’re worth, we won’t stand in your way’.

“We shook hands and the rest is history.”