Chris Hughton is hoping that the promotion race goes until the final weekend.
Middlesbrough, Burnley, and Brighton are the teams currently involved in the race for automatic promotions. Only the top two teams will be promoted automatically to the Premier League whereas the rest will be competing for a play-off place. The latter is extremely dangerous for club’s desperately in need of promotion. Often, teams that have momentum towards the end of the campaign into getting promoted to the play-offs. Hughton will want to enhance his reputation as a manager by getting Brighton through the automatic places.
His team has done exceedingly well since the turn of the year to be close to the top of the table. Brighton are just two points behind Burnley with six matches left. However, the likely competition is now coming from Middlesbrough, who are one point ahead of Brighton but with a game in hand. Hughton is already looking forward to Middlesbrough’s final game of the campaign, which will be against his team. He is hoping that the promotion race goes into the final weekend so as to enhance the excitement for the viewers. There are some potentially tough encounters for Brighton between now and end of the campaign. This includes a home game against Derby in the penultimate match.
“I hope the Middlesbrough game is a meaningful one.I know they have a lot of home games in their run-in and they’re going to be very strong.We also play Derby in the second to last game at the Amex, so we certainly have a tough run-in.We had a very good start to the season where we went a long period unbeaten, but probably had too many draws. Then we had a difficult period and that’s when you start to look at the characters in the side and where you’re going to get some goals from,” said Hughton.