In our exclusive interview, the former striker discusses Brighton's European hopes, Will Lankshear's impressive form and more from the Football League season so-far.
Don Goodman believes Brighton might struggle to keep up with current Premier League Champions Arsenal, but sees them as strong contenders for a top-four finish and a place in next season’s Champions League.
The former striker and commentator also believes their involvement in the UEFA Conference League could make it difficult to sustain their impressive form over the course of the campaign as they look to challenge Mikel Arteta’s men – who are favourites in the football betting to retain the title.
In our exclusive interview, Goodman further discusses Ipswich Town’s hopes for survival under Gary O’Neil, whether Will Lankshear’s form could earn him an England call-up and the reason for Burnley’s struggles in the Championship.
Do you believe that Brighton are in a genuine title race this season?
There is an argument to be made that they would be the nearest pursuers to Arsenal. But I can’t see them sustaining the results that they’ll need to in order to overtake Arsenal, and the reason is Arsenal have already got a five-point cushion on Brighton.
In terms of the rest of the teams though, they do seem to be the ones that are putting it together the best.
I think winning the league might be a fraction beyond them though, and I do worry later on in the season what impact juggling European football will have on Brighton.
When you look back to last season and you saw that Crystal Palace, Nottingham Forest and Spurs were all in a relegation battle.
I do think that this season it looks like Sunderland for example are struggling juggling that European football with Premier League football, so it’s not uncommon.
For Brighton to be able to sustain it through a 38-game Premier League season and a European campaign, you kind of think maybe not win the league, but absolutely, you hope that they can be challenging for a top-four Champions League spot.
The club are also competing in the Europa Conference League, could this end up being a special season for the club?
I’ve been commentating for Sky Sports for 20 years next March, and I’ve commentated on Brighton and Hove Albion in League One and a lot in the Championship over that period of time.
To see the progression of the football club, along with others like Bournemouth and Brentford who are very similar in terms of the trajectory is wonderful and highlights the benefit of being a forward-thinking, well-run football club that plans ahead.
It is wonderful to watch football clubs progress, and I think that over the last certainly few seasons since the Europa Conference League has been introduced by UEFA, it has certainly provided a happy hunting ground for Premier League clubs in terms of being able to win it.
And there’s no reason whatsoever that Brighton cannot go on to win the Europa Conference League.
I’m not saying it’s easy, but I’m saying with the football that they’re playing, you could make an argument that they’re the best team in it.
It’s early days, but Ipswich Town are looking like a solid team. Do you think they have more about them this time around to survive in the Premier League?
I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. When you look at the list of results, even though they haven’t won in the last four, they’ve been competitive.
They only just got beat by Man City, they only just got beat by Bournemouth, they’ve drawn with Hull, and they’ve drawn with Nottingham Forest.
When I recall Ipswich, when last they were in the Premier League, unless I’m badly wrong, they were on the end of some one-sided scorelines and some beatings.
You’d expect any newly promoted team to suffer a bit in the Premier League at times, but it just seems this time around that they’re much more difficult to play against.
They’ve got 11 points after 10 games, and if they can keep that rate of points going, they’d have probably 38, 39 points, which would be enough to survive you suspect.
That’ll be the aim for them, but you can’t get ahead of yourself. I think for clubs like Ipswich particularly, there are no easy games in the Premier League.
But when you just look at the little run coming their way, they play Spurs, they play Aston Villa at home, then they play Coventry, which will be huge, Leeds United, Newcastle, who aren’t pulling up trees.
So, there are points available for them there, and Gary O’Neill will have his eye on that run of fixtures. I’m pretty sure he’ll set himself a target of a certain number of points in that little run of games.
It looks on paper as if, for survival purposes, Ipswich really need to be taking points from this little next five-game run.
Gary O’Neil brings a more cautious approach than Kieran McKenna did. Considering how he kept both Bournemouth and Wolves in the division in the past, was he actually the perfect appointment in the summer?
I think he absolutely was the right appointment for Ipswich, and I think he was a brave appointment.
With respect to Gary O’Neil, and he will know that I mean no offence, but I don’t think that the Ipswich fans were overly excited at Gary’s appointment.
Maybe they were looking at Gary, and maybe comparing him with Kieran McKenna, who did the most remarkable job for Ipswich Town, let’s have that right.
Kieran McKenna would be up there with some of the best managers that Ipswich Town have ever had.
So, for Gary to perhaps not be the sexiest name that the Ipswich Town fans would have wanted may have been slightly disappointing in the summer.
But he would have taken it on the chin, and now we can see that he’s producing a very competitive team. It feels like he’s certainly got the backing, and he’s won any doubters over.
I think he’s doing a great job, and it was quite a smart appointment from the Ipswich hierarchy.
Sunderland claimed a huge win over Chelsea, is this the result that finally kickstarts their season or are you worried with how they’re looking?
I think this was the kind of performance from Sunderland that we saw lots of last season.
They would be going into a game as an underdog, but they’d find a way. They’d keep things tight, and they’d always have the ability to nick a goal.
Once they got their noses in front, they made it very difficult for opponents and that’s what happened against Chelsea, and they probably should have won by more.
They really restricted Chelsea apart from maybe one chance for Morgan Rogers where he should have done better.
Chelsea had 0.66 xG and I’m pretty confident that will be at the lower end of what they’ve produced in PL games previously.
Sunderland probably should have scored one or two more goals, so all in all, the three points were massively important but they also needed a performance like that.
They got booed off in midweek in Europe. Everybody connected with the club, the playing side and the staff will understand why because it was a poor performance and it was on the back of a string of poor performances.
But if ever you want to get confidence and you want to get to looking like you looked last season, then I think that was the perfect response.
I’m really pleased for Régis Le Bris because there’s no doubt that had they kept on playing poorly and losing games of football, his position would have definitely come under massive threat.
I hope that this can be a catalyst for Sunderland for the rest of the season.
There’s been shouts of Will Lankshear earning a call-up from Thomas Tuchel. Could that happen this season or will he have to be playing in the Premier League?
I would think the reality is that Will’s not getting carried away, and I certainly saw an interview with Kim Hellberg on the subject, and he wasn’t getting carried away.
Clearly, he’s a talented player, but there’s levels to go between scoring goals in the Championship and playing international football.
I’d be very surprised if he got an opportunity while playing in the Championship.
Having said all of that, we’ve just seen Jobe Bellingham get called up, and the reason he got called up was because of how he was performing for the under-21s.
I know Jobe is playing for Borussia Dortmund, but Thomas Tuchel has said that the U21 pathway is open to players.
Will Lankshear is an under-21 international, so therefore that might be a route for him to impress rather than just his club form.
Obviously, you need to be doing both at the same time for club and country, but I would imagine that he would be needing to prove it at the higher level in the Premier League before Thomas Tuchel decides to go that way.
But there’s no doubt about the opportunity that is there in the future for Lankshear because there is a lack of number nines in English football.
There’s a real shortage behind Harry Kane, and there’s no getting away from that. As long as he keeps working hard and scoring goals, then his opportunity will come in the future.
I love when I listen to him being interviewed. You can tell that he’s got his feet firmly on the ground and that he’s not going to get carried away. He needs to just keep doing what he’s doing and see where it takes him.
Do you think Spurs regret letting Lankshear leave on a permanent deal and are you surprised there’s no buy-back clause?
I think the lack of buy-back clause is the biggest surprise in that deal.
Clearly, for whatever reason, whoever had been watching him play at Oxford United on behalf of Spurs didn’t feel that he would be able to break into the Spurs Premier League team this year.
Therefore, it was understandable if that’s how they felt, why they would allow him to leave and develop elsewhere.
But not putting a buy-back clause in. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it looks like a bit of a schoolboy error if you ask me.
After just missing out on the playoffs last season, Wrexham haven’t quite got going yet this season. What’s not clicking for that team at the minute?
Yeah, it’s a difficult one with Wrexham. Honestly, people are saying what’s not clicking, but they’ve just taken four points from Middlesbrough and Wolves.
Those were four massive points against two very good teams. There was a real concern with how things were going, and I was at Bramall Lane when they lost 1-0 to Sheffield United which wasn’t a good performance at all.
The first half in particular I think left Phil Parkinson angry and I don’t think we’ve ever seen him like that with his players before.
He did call them out in terms of a lack of desire, and that’s certainly the first time we’ve heard that in five years under his tenure.
But he’s got the response that he wanted and now for Wrexham, they’ve just played two of the best teams and proved that they can be competitive against two of the best teams in the division.
They have now got, on paper anyway, a wonderful opportunity to get points on the board and the table could look very different, very quickly.
They play Lincoln next, and then Bristol City, neither of whom are in form. Then Portsmouth at home and Norwich away, who are two teams going well at the minute.
But then there’s Charlton at home and Bolton away, so that is six games where I think Phil Parkinson would be thinking they can take quite a lot of points from if they hit their levels.
If they do, then the whole league table may look different, and we wouldn’t be asking questions of Wrexham.
Phil Parkinson has taken the club on this rise through the divisions, but could we see the end of his journey?
It feels to me, and I’m only on the outside looking in, like he has absolute full support from the owners and the hierarchy within Wrexham.
There will come a point along this journey, if Wrexham aren’t looking like they can challenge to get into the Premier League, where the ownership may have to take that difficult decision.
Phil Parkinson’s not daft. He knows the ambition of the football club. Phil knows football, and it’s all about results on the pitch and progression.
I think that’s why people have been a little bit surprised, because he got them to 7th in the Championship, their highest league finish ever in their history, last season.
I think there was an expectation that they’d be having a repeat season, and up until these last two games, it really wasn’t looking that way.
But I think the last two games have put them back in it.
There will come a point if Wrexham don’t look like they’re going to get to the Premier League where the hierarchy will change managers. It’s just football but what period of time they allow for that promotion, only the owners know.
Fabio Celestini is now the man in charge at Turf Moor, how difficult of a task does he have to make sure the club get out of this slump?
Just when you don’t think it can get any worse, it does at Burnley. I think that it’s such a blow to be winning a game, the way they were and throw it away.
They just look all over the shop and I think when you look at the team, you look at the players in the team, you look at the value of the players in the team and you look at some of the experience within the team, it’s inexcusable really.
Clearly, they’ve had a problem all season in conceding goals. There’s no doubt about that and as I said, 31 goals conceded in 15 Championship games. If it continues at that rate, conceding two or over two a game, then they’ll get relegated. It’s as simple as that.
For Fabio Celestini, his sole focus needs to be making them hard to score goals against. I am shocked at how Burnley have been this season, but it just seems to keep going from bad to worse.
Craig Bellamy, Rob Edwards and Carlos Corberan all turned down the chance to manage Burnley this season. Considering this is a club who are in and out of the Premier League, why don’t they have the appeal to those types of managers?
I think the question sort of answers itself, and I think what they’re going through at the minute was predictable for these three managers.
Clearly, I think Craig Bellamy didn’t feel that he was going to get the support that was needed to propel Burnley back to the Premier League at the first time.
As for the other managers, it just doesn’t look like an attractive job anymore.
I think the ownership, the hierarchy, the decisions that they’ve made and the recruitment team, I think they all have to take a massive part of the responsibility for what’s happening now.
Before a ball was kicked this season, I thought they’d have enough to be challenging for a playoff spot given that it’s top-eight this season. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I do think that the whole club feels toxic at the minute, and I understand the supporters’ frustrations, and I share those frustrations with them.
I think that group of players should be taking a long, hard look in the mirror.
Jack Moylan now has 11 goals in all competitions this season, including a hattrick against West Ham. Is he currently one of the most underrated players in the division?
I’d say that he probably isn’t underrated anymore because the cat’s out of the bag as to how good he is, and I think Cardiff have pulled off a masterstroke in getting him from Lincoln City.
The style of football that Brian Barry-Murphy wants Cardiff to play is absolutely perfect for Jack Moylan. He is thriving under Brian Barry-Murphy and it’s good to see how much he’s come on as a player.
It seems to me like he can do everything. He’s technically gifted, he can run, he works, he tackles, he scores, and he assists.
He’s a good all-rounder for a midfield player and Cardiff City have got an absolute steal from Lincoln.
Dave Challinor was recently appointed as manager, what impact can he have at that club?
I think everybody in football knows how highly I rate Dave Challinor. I have put his name in the mix when I’ve been asked about many Championship jobs and asked who clubs should be looking at.
But as clubs go, certainly in League One, they don’t get bigger than Sheffield Wednesday, do they really?
It’s a brilliant opportunity. I said this the other week with Michael Duff going to Bradford City, it’s a huge opportunity with a massive club playing in front of a big crowd every week.
I feel the same for Dave Challinor, and I do feel that he’s got a squad to work with that is more than capable of challenging.
They’re six points off second, but they’ve got a game in hand and there is a lot of football to be played still.
I do think that he’ll be able to galvanize them and get them playing the kind of football that the Sheffield Wednesday fans will really enjoy watching.
I’m optimistic for that football club because I believe they’ve hired a top manager.
