Brighton have taken the biggest gamble of Tony Bloom’s ownership by sacking a manager who kept a patchy squad in the Premier League two seasons running. For Swansea’s Graham Potter - the club's No 1 target - recruitment would need to improve sharply for Chris Hughton’s dismissal to have a hope of success.

Not once in 2018-19 were Brighton in the Premier League relegation zone. In December they reached 10th place with a win over Crystal Palace. But an alarming slide of three wins in 23 dropped them to two points above the relegation zone. Brighton’s owner, Bloom, who fired Hughton at the training ground the morning after Manchester City’s title-securing 4-1 win, calculated that it was better to head off the possibility of that slump continuing than deal with the consequences next autumn.

This proactive approach removes Brighton’s best manager of the modern era. Hughton raised them from 17th in the Championship to 15th in the club’s first season in the top tier since 1983, and then kept them up again after a summer of underwhelming buys up front. Florin Andone, Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Jurgen Locadia have added little to Hughton’s strong defensive block of Lewis Dunk and Shane Duffy.