Brighton CEO Paul Barber says the timing of Dan Ashworth's exit wasn't ideal but David Weir has ended up being a first-rate successor as technical director.
Ashworth resigned from his position at the Albion back in February 2022 before joining Premier League rivals Newcastle United just in late May of that year. Weir, who was the Seagulls' loans manager, became acting director in Ashworth's place and then took up the role on a full-time basis that month while his former boss was on gardening leave.
During their time together, the former Everton and Rangers defender learned a great deal about the position from the FA's former director of elite development and while it was a blow to lose the 52-year-old, who is now the Magpies' sporting director, the Sussex side have carried on as usual without him.
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Now, Brighton's deputy director Barber has spoken about Ashworth's departure and how when he was on the south coast, he helped identify Weir as a suitable replacement. Since his move, the Albion and Newcastle have shot up the table - so much so that they will be playing in European competitions next season.
He added that Ashworth may be second to none in regards to technical directors he has worked with, with Barber previously working at the Football Association, as an executive director at Tottenham, and then as a CEO of the Vancouver Whitecaps.
Barber said on the High Performance Podcast: "First of all, Dan [Ashworth] is one, if not, the best technical directors that I have worked with, and David Weir who is now his successor at Brighton I think is going to be as good in his own way, in a different way.
"Dan and I used to talk openly about what we would do if he were to leave because if you are building succession plans you have got to understand who the current technical director thinks are good, up-and-coming directors are in order to get the best succession plan in place. We talked about David Weir and his background as a top-level player for Everton and Rangers and for Scotland. We talked about the role he was doing for us at the time which was a loans manager.
"We talked about his education and pretty quickly we realised Dan's successor was in the building and it was just a case of making sure that we helped David as much as possible to realise that potential and then when the time came, and it did come when Dan moved to Newcastle, that not only was David ready to step up into the role that he wanted to.
"So we gave David six months as acting technical director, it was a chance for us to see what we saw in him was going to come to pass as a technical director in the role itself and also for David to have a good look at the role and see if he liked it. Thankfully we liked him, he liked us and therefore our successor to Dan was there.
"But internally we talked very, very positively about having the talent in the building to overcome the setback of Dan deciding to leave to move to Newcastle. We would have preferred he didn't leave at that moment but he did. You can't necessarily predict the outcome in those situations but you can actually prefer for it - and we did."
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