Liam Rosenior joins Derby County as first team coach
Brighton’s Under 23s assistant manager Liam Rosenior has left the club to join Derby County as first team coach.
The popular former Seagull becomes part of Phillip Cocu’s backroom staff at Pride Park. Cocu has recently take over the Rams following Frank Lampard’s move to Chelsea and the subsequent rebranding of Frank Lampard’s Derby County to just plain old Derby County.
Rosenior’s departure will be met with great sadness at the Amex. He may have only played 51 times for the Albion, but he made quite the impression in that time as one of the most likeable and professional players that the club have ever had.
He signed on a free transfer from Hull City in the summer of 2015, providing valuable competition to both Bruno and Gaetan Bong in the full back positions, as well as being used as a defensive winger by Chris Hughton away from home.
Rosenior had his fair share of injury problems, but that he always bounced back from them says much about his character. He missed three months of the 2015-16 season with knee ligament damage, but returned for the run in.
It was at the end of that campaign that the defining moment of Rosenior’s Albion career came. There he was, standing covered in blood in front of the away end at Hillsborough urging Brighton supporters to keep their chins up after a 2-0 playoff semi final first leg defeat to Sheffield Wednesday.
That was a terrible night in South Yorkshire. We’d seen an unprecedented four players go off injured and after losing out on automatic promotion to the Premier League by a single goal on the final day of the season, it was doubly gutting that it looked like the dream of top flight football was being snatched away in such unfortunate circumstances.
Rosenior still believed though. And there he was, telling the 2,000 or so of us who’d trekked to Sheffield that we should too. It didn’t quite work out – a 1-1 draw in the second leg saw Wednesday through to Wembley, but with that simple gesture Rosenior had marked himself out as an Albion great.
He missed much of the 2016-17 campaign with a broken ankle sustained in a terrible challenge by Reading striker Yann Kermorgant in August, playing just 10 times.
His experience and knowledge in the changing room was still invaluable however, as it was in the Albion’s debut Premier League season. Again he struggled with injuries, taking to the field just six times before retiring in the summer of 2018.
Rosenior had an extraordinary record of only being on the losing side three times in 37 league starts for the club. His will to win as well as his intelligence marked him out as somebody who would make an excellent coach, and so the Albion sensibly appointed him as Simon Rusk’s assistant last year.
Rosenior has made no secret of his desire to coach at first team level. Given how well he comes across as a pundit, it’s a surprise that we’ve managed to keep him helping out the development squad for so long.
He turned down a move to join Jonathan Woodgate’s coaching staff at Middlesbrough earlier in the summer, but the opportunity to work under one of the greatest players of the 1990s and 2000s in Cocu has proven to be enough to lure Rosenior to Derby.
He’ll go there with every Brighton fans best wishes and gratitude – and if he turns into the coach that many of us suspect he can be, there’s every chance we’ll see him back at the Amex one day as Albion manager.
