Town Look to Go Top at Brighton Wednesday, 21st Jan 2015 06:00 Boss Mick McCarthy warns that 20th-placed Brighton will be far from easy opponents as the Blues look to go top of the Championship following Bournemouth's 1-0 defeat at Leeds last night. McCarthy's side, who dropped to third on goal difference after Middlesbrough's home win against Cardiff, will return to the top the table if they beat the Seagulls with the Blues a point behind the Cherries but with a significantly worse goal difference. Town previously briefly hit the top following their Boxing Day win at Brentford. Having beaten Millwall, who are 22nd, on Saturday, Town's run of matches against teams at the wrong end of the table continues with the visit to Albion, before second-bottom Wigan are at Portman Road a week on Saturday and February kicks-off with a trip to Rotherham, who are 21st. McCarthy dismisses suggestions that any of these games will be a simpler task than beating teams from higher up the division. “So they’re easy are they, the ones in the bottom six?” he said. “I seem to remember when I came here and we were bottom with seven points we beat Leicester here, and we beat Derby here last year. “They’re fighting for their lives and I remember in my first season here it took 55 points to stay in the league “We’d come off and we’d had a decent result, but we’ll have had a draw when all the other bottom teams would have won. “It was just crazy and I don’t see anything different this year. There’s not a lot between us. Thinking that it’ll be any easier than playing Brentford or Wolves or Middlesbrough or Derby or any of those top teams would be wrong. We’ll prepare exactly the same way. “I think the league consists of 24 teams and on the day there’s barely anything between them.” He points out that the Seagulls, who have won only twice at home in the league this season, most recently against Wigan on November 4th, still have many of the players who have seen them into the play-offs in the last two seasons. “They’ve been in the play-offs twice in the last couple of years and they’ve still got the majority of that squad, they’ve still got good players,” McCarthy added. “If I was in Brighton’s position my thought process would be that at some stage we’re going to win at home, we’re going to have a good result. “I don’t take the negative view at all when I am suffering like that. We’ll be the same, we’ll approach it in exactly the same way as we did Millwall, we knew how tough that one was. I think Brighton might just be tougher still.” He recalled: “It was a really tough game there last season, they were a really good footballing side. “We had to defend in the last 15 or 20 minutes and nicked it late on with the second one, but it was a good performance that.” The Blues boss says he knows what to expect tonight having run the rule over the Seagulls’ performances since Chris Hughton took over as manager on the final day of December. “The shape of the team’s been fairly settled,” he said. “They’ve played one up front and one in behind, 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3, however people want to describe the shape. “We’ve seen the team and they have had Craig Mackail-Smith and Jake Forster-Caskey playing in behind. I don’t expect them to change the way they’ve played because they’ve had good results. “They beat Charlton, they beat Brentford [in the cup], they lost to Brentford at the weekend, but overall Chris’s results have been good. “I’m just saying that if you’ve found a way and a system, something that suits you [you stick with it]. “They’re going to lose matches, just like we are, but stick to what you’re doing and I think they’ll be exactly the same as they were in the games we’ve watched and had watched for us.” He believes his good friend Chris Hughton was an excellent appointment: “I think Chris Hughton is a good fit for anywhere. He’s a really good coach, a good manager, he’s a lovely fella. “I say all those things and, of course, I want to slap him on Wednesday night, football-wise. “He’s a really good mate of mine from when I played with him for the Republic of Ireland. “We were both in the 1988 European Championship team. I made my debut in 1984 and Chris was in the squad then. We were good pals. “He is a very, very good coach, manager, a football man. It doesn’t matter where he might have gone he would have been a good fit. “He was a fabulous player and he’s a good pal of mine and wherever he’s been he’s had success, whether it was at Newcastle, Birmingham, Norwich, and I’m certain he’ll have success at Brighton because they’ve got a great infrastructure and now they’ve got a good bloke in charge.” McCarthy says Hughton likes to play good football but not at the expense of results: “Chris will entertain in the right way. His teams will play football. “Yes, he will attack but, let me tell you, they’re hard to beat and hard to play against. He doesn’t set them up to simply entertain everybody, he sets them up to win games.” McCarthy seems unlikely to make too many changes from the team which beat Millwall 3-1 at the Den on Saturday. Bartosz Bialkowski will be in goal with skipper Luke Chambers at right-back, Tyrone Mings at left-back and Christophe Berra and Tommy Smith in the centre of the defence. The Town manager has decisions to make in the centre of midfield with Cole Skuse and Teddy Bishop back having been ill and impressing during Tuesday training. McCarthy could choose to pair Skuse with Kevin Bru, who signed a new contract yesterday, with Bishop on the bench. The Blues boss would then have to decide between Jay Tabb and Stephen Hunt for the left midfield role but the latter may well get the nod having been involved in both his brother Noel’s goals against the Lions. Paul Anderson will continue on the right. Two-goal Hunt junior again will partner fellow Waterford man Daryl Murphy up front with David McGoldrick out until the Wigan game with a knee injury. New signings Freddie Sears and Paddy Kenny will be on the bench. Brighton boss Hughton, who signed Leon Best on loan for the rest of the season from Blackburn yesterday, is hopeful that striker Craig Mackail-Smith and utility man Greg Halford will be OK to face Town after suffering minor ankle and calf problems respectively. "I need to assess the injury situation from Saturday," Hughton said. "We need to have as many bodies as fit as possible. "Craig rolled his ankle, but he was OK to come back on, so hopefully it won't be too bad. Greg felt his calf slightly, but he hasn't played a lot of late, so hopefully that's not too bad either.” Forster-Caskey is expected to be OK, despite suffering a hip problem, while midfielders Dale Stephens (ankle) and Kazenga LuaLua (knee) are not yet ready for a return. Kemy Agustien (knee) and Andrew Crofts (ankle) also remain sidelined. Defender Lewis Dunk is suspended having been red-carded during Saturday’s 1-0 home defeat to Brentford with 35-year-old Northern Ireland international Aaron Hughes set to take his place. Hughton is expecting a tough game with the Blues having won five times on their travels this season: “They’re a strong team away from home and are on the back of a 3-1 win at Millwall as well, so we’ve got to be able to compete and also ask those questions as well. That’s what we’ll be trying to do. "I saw a lot of spirit in the team against Brentford. We went down to ten men for 30 minutes and even had a spell of going down to nine men when Craig went off the pitch. “We managed to threaten and create a number of chances in that time, so there were a lot of positives against an opposition that’s a very good team.” Historically, Town have the upper hand, having won 30 of the games (27 in the league) between the sides, Brighton 22 (20) and with 13 (12) ending in draws. In September at Portman Road, second-half goals from Jonny Parr and Daryl Murphy saw Town to a 2-0 victory over the Seagulls. Parr stabbed home a rebound in the 79th minute and Murphy sealed the win two minutes from time. In March at the Amex, second-half goals from Tommy Smith and Murphy saw the Blues to a 2-0 victory. Smith nodded home Murphy’s header across goal from a corner on the hour, then the Irishman stooped to add the second with 10 minutes remaining after excellent work from loanee Jonny Williams on the left. Brighton keeper David Stockdale spent the first half of 2011/12 on loan with the Blues making 18 appearances. The 29-year-old joined the Seagulls full-time from Fulham this summer. Albion midfielder Jake Forster-Caskey is the stepson of ex-Blues and Seagulls striker Nicky Forster, while Town assistant boss Terry Connor was a player with the Seagulls between 1983 and 1987. Tonight’s referee is Keith Stroud from Hampshire, who has shown 109 yellow cards and three red in 23 games so far this season. Stroud’s most recent Town game was the 1-0 home defeat to Norwich in August in which he booked Tyrone Mings and Cole Skuse as well as Canaries striker Kyle Lafferty. Squad from: Bialkowski, Kenny, Chambers (c), Mings, Parr, Berra, Smith, Clarke, Skuse, Bru, Bishop, Tabb, S Hunt, Anderson, Ambrose, Stewart, Murphy, N Hunt, Sears.
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