End of an era as Glenn Murray leaves Brighton for Watford on loan

It is the end of an era. Glenn Murray, one of Brighton & Hove Albion’s greatest ever strikers, has left the club to join Championship side Watford on a season long loan.

With Murray out of contract next summer, it seems likely that he has played his final game for the Seagulls after 12 years, two different spells, two promotions, two home grounds, six different managers and most important of all, 111 goals.

That total is the second highest ever recorded by a Brighton striker, behind only the great Tommy Cook who bagged 123 across the 1920s and 1930s.

Murray first arrived at the club in January 2008, a £300,000 signing from Rochdale. It was the biggest fee Brighton had paid for a player for the best part of 30 years and the first transfer funded by Tony Bloom’s pocket, a silent investor at that point in time 18 months before he assumed the chairmanship of the Albion from Dick Knight.

Two goals for Murray on his home debut in a 3-0 win against Crewe Alexandra was a sign that Brighton had got themselves a quality striker and despite only being at Withdean for half of the 2007-08 season, Murray ended the campaign as second top scorer behind his strike partner Nicky Forster.

It would be rewriting history to suggest that Murray was a popular player in his first few seasons with the Albion. Rumours abounded that he and his wife wanted to return to the north of England, there were lengthy spells on the sidelines with hernia issues and some supporters went mad because Murray did not clap the away end following a 0-0 draw at Brentford early in the 2009-10 season.

He was nicknamed ‘The League One Berbatov’, which could either be taken as a complement for his prowess as a goal scoring target man or an insult towards a perceived lack of effort.

Murray’s Brighton career really took off with the appointment of Gus Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named as Albion manager. Poyet You Know Who was able to get Murray fit for an entire season for the first time and the result was 22 goals which fired the Seagulls to the 2010-11 League One title.

Despite his goal laden campaign, Poyet You Know Who did not see fit to offer Murray the pay rise the player wanted.

Murray himself had no desire to move away from Brighton or Sussex and so when Crystal Palace came calling, he committed the cardinal sin of signing on the dotted line with the Albion’s arch rivals so as to not have to relocate.

Brighton’s loss was Palace’s gain. While the Albion spent the next six seasons in the Championship, Murray scored 30 times to help Palace win promotion to the Premier League via the playoffs, eliminating Poyet’s You Know Who’s Brighton along the way.

To make matters worse, Murray always seemed to score against Brighton. His respect for the club was such that he never celebrated, even when he was getting pelted by Albion supporters who could not forgive his move to Selhurst Park.

Luckily, Chris Hughton did not see Murray being a double agent as a problem. He re-signed the soon-to-be 33-year-old on loan from Plucky Little Bournemouth in the summer of 2016 before paying £3 million to turn it into a permanent deal when the next January transfer window opened.

It turned out to be an inspired piece of business. Murray scored 23 times to lead Brighton into the Premier League, making him an Albion top scorer in two promotion seasons.

Once in the top flight, he scored 14 times in the 2017-18 season to spark genuine talk of an England call up. Another 15 goals followed in 2018-19, including his landmark 100th in a 1-0 win over Wolverhampton Wanderers which he marked by bringing back the ‘Glenn’ celebration from his first spell.

The ‘Glenn’ has since taken on the form of a traditional greeting in pubs and clubs around Brighton and Murray moving to Watford is unlikely to change that.

In the Albion’s first two top flight seasons, Murray netted 36% of the club’s goals. Since Sky Sports invented football in 1992, no other team had been so reliant on one player to score for them.

2018-19 saw Murray convert 25.6% of the shots he took. That was a better ratio than Mo Salah, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sergio Aguero. Only Anthony Martial and Sadio Mane were more clinical than Murray in Hughton’s final season at the helm.

Murray’s impressive stats were sadly unable to convince Graham Potter that the veteran striker had a role to play in his Brighton side. Murray only made seven Premier League starts in 2019-20 and there were numerous occasions when it was blindingly obvious that Potter did not fancy him as a player.

The most notable of those came away against Bournemouth in January’s 3-1 defeat. Potter threw on Leandro Trossard and Solly March but kept Murray on the bench as an unused substitute with the new wingers tossing crosses into the box for the hobbit-sized strike duo of Aaron Connolly and Neal Maupay to try and win in the air.

Murray was recalled for the next game away at West Ham United and netted a vital equaliser in the 3-3 draw at the London Stadium. His appearances remained sporadic even though he did all that was asked of him on the rare occasions he was used, including setting up Maupay’s opener away at Southampton in July.

With his career coming to an end, Glenn Murray needs to be playing regularly and Watford can give him the first team football which Brighton cannot.

Watford are getting themselves a player who still has the ability to fire a club to promotion from the Championship. Murray has never relied on pace; from the rare glimpses we saw of him last season, his finishing hasn’t deserted him and nor has his link up play.

The word legend has been overused for some time now, but it is one that 100% applies to Murray. His record speaks for itself and his achievements in a Brighton shirt surpass Peter Ward and Bobby Zamora, the two men considered to be the Albion’s best ever centre forwards.

It is no secret that Murray has long been one of the WeAreBrighton.com team’s favourite ever players. We will no doubt be putting out a gushing piece in the coming days to try and convince you that he belongs ahead of Ward and Zamora in that pecking order.

Without Murray, Brighton would not have walked to the League One title. They would not have been promoted from the Championship with such ease.

And they would almost certainly have been relegated from the Premier League by now, given he supplied over a third of the Albion’s top flight goals between 2017 and 2019.

After 285 games, Murray’s Brighton career is all but over. If the club have any sense, they will invite Murray back to the Amex when the stadium is back at full capacity to get the send off he deserves.

For now, we can only wish him good luck at Watford. I know who I want to win the Championship this season.