Sweeper-keeper Mat Ryan finds his feet at Brighton

Brighton have been transformed into a team that builds from the back. Socceroos keeper Mat Ryan was ready for it.

Socceroos goalkeeper Mat Ryan talks is thriving under the new Brighton manager

Mat Ryan was sitting in a barber’s chair, down the road from his seafront home in Hove, when he heard the news. It was May 13, one day after the end of an English Premier League season in which Brighton & Hove Albion had avoided relegation, and Ryan was getting a last-minute trim before jetting off to Paris on the first leg of his summer holidays.

“A fan had come into the same barber shop and got his hair cut,” Ryan recalls. “Once he was finished, he got up out of his chair, looked at his phone and swore out loud. Everyone took notice. We were like, ‘What?’. He said, ‘They’ve sacked Chris!’. I said, ‘What?!’. That’s how I found out and it was a shock.”

In his 4½ years at the helm, Chris Hughton took Brighton from 21st in the Championship up to the EPL and kept them there. He staved off the threat of relegation two seasons running but, after just three wins in their final 23 games of the 2018-19 campaign, Brighton chairman Tony Bloom decided it was time for a change.

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A successful poker player, Bloom was willing to gamble as he appointed Graham Potter as Hughton’s successor. “As soon as he was announced, you start to listen to discussions around the place about how he’s been doing and start doing your own research about where he’s been before and how he’s done,” Ryan, 27, says.

What the Socceroos goalkeeper found was a Solihull-born coach who had caught the attention of English football with his attractive style and quirky techniques in Sweden.

Under Potter, Ostersunds enjoyed back-to-back promotions and a run in the Europa League, where they beat Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium last year, and where his unique methods were uncovered. Potter’s players would perform at the local theatre as well as on the pitch, with his cultural project including a production of modern dance to Swan Lake.

Seven months on from Potter’s arrival and Ryan has seen no sign of any ballet shoes yet, but the head coach has transformed Brighton into an elegant machine in his opening act. His modern approach swiftly revolutionised the way the Seagulls play, leaving fans looking up optimistically rather than down. It has been a drastic change of direction but one Ryan has welcomed.

“Chris was a little more of the old, more physically dominating style of game,” he says. “You need that in certain aspects but there’s less playing out from the back, more physical competing, fighting, longer balls, second balls.

“Graham is more the modern style that you’re seeing these days, the Pep Guardiola style, where he wants you to play out from the back with short combinations and an aggressive defensive game by pressing really high up the pitch.”

The shift in approach is most clearly seen in Ryan’s increased involvement in build-up play. He made 137 short passes across the whole of last season, with 85.2 per cent of his kicks launched far up the field. Compare that with 404 short passes this term and 32.16 per cent of kicks as long balls. Brighton were transformed overnight into a team that built from the back.

Ryan was ready for it. His journey from the A-League in Australia with Central Coast Mariners, to Belgium with Club Bruges and Genk, as well as two years at Valencia in Spain, saw him develop into a goalkeeper comfortable with the ball at his feet, just like his idol, Manuel Neuer, the Bayern Munich and Germany star. It was the way Ange Postecoglou wanted the Socceroos team to play between 2013 and 2017, and has been continued by incumbent coach Graham Arnold.

Instead, it was Ryan’s arrival on British shores two years ago that led to the biggest lurch in his game. “I always considered myself a bit of a sweeper-keeper,” Ryan, who has won 59 caps, says. “When I came to England I felt I had to make a big adjustment in that aspect of my game, to become a more shot-stopping goalkeeper. As a player, it’s about how quickly you can adapt to a manager’s needs or wants, and Chris wanted that.

“With Chris, there was a lot less risk playing out from the back and a more direct game.

“With Graham, it’s been a lot more about expressing ourselves, playing out from the back, calm and composed on the ball, and playing our way between the lines. It was an aspect I felt I had in my arsenal in previous clubs.

“It’s exciting to see the progress that we’re making when you’re delivering a performance as we did the other night against (Crystal) Palace, our big rival, away from home, how good we were on the ball.

“There are times when I sit back and marvel at some of the football we are playing.”

Potter’s focus, Ryan says, is on being mentally and physically fresh. He removed the concept of double training sessions, even in pre-season, to allow for better rest. “The more we got to know him, the more we found the extra lengths he goes to,” Ryan says.

So far, that has not required any theatre performances for Ryan and his teammates. In pre-season, Potter arranged team-building activities common in football clubs, such as white-water rafting and a barbecue at their Lancing training ground. Potter, Ryan says, already found a united squad when he arrived. There is no place for dividing figures within these walls.

“The gaffer would admit coming here, there wasn’t really an issue with that side of things,” Ryan says. “Since I’ve arrived and what I’ve heard from the past, the camaraderie is a real policy about not signing any big egos or people that may disrupt that. I know they go above and beyond in the scouting for their recruitment to make sure no one is going to disrupt that.”

The only thing that has been disrupted is Ryan’s celebrations. In the second game of the season, when Brighton drew 1-1 with West Ham United, Ryan went dashing out of his penalty area in jubilation after Leandro Trossard had scored. Then VAR intervened, ruling the goal out for an offside.

“There’s a couple of times where we’ve scored and I’ve begun a five-yard dash to go and celebrate and I have to think, ‘hold on a second, just contain yourself’,” Ryan says.

“I don’t see a big difference over the course of a season. Sometimes you get the rub of the green and sometimes you don’t.

“Sometimes you get the decision, sometimes you don’t. So it’s the same way as a referee, when he’s making a split decision in the moment, whether a foul or not, it’s the same when it goes to VAR. Sometimes it gets overturned and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Ryan’s mother, Carol, and two friends from Australia have travelled to the UK for the festive period.

There was an extra place at the dinner table for Jose Izquierdo, the Brighton winger, though he has returned to his family in Colombia after suffering an injury.

“I knew his family weren’t going to be over so I just extended the invite to him,” Ryan says. “Bruno Saltor (the former Brighton captain) had me over in my first season when I was alone and other guys have done in the past.

“It’s basically what the club aims for in that aspect and they’ve done a great job in sustaining it. That’s one of the key ingredients as to why the club is how it is now.”

The Times