Jeff Minton a rare bright light in Albion’s gloom after dream Spurs debut

AFTER 10 years at Tottenham Hotspur, Jeff Minton spent five years with Brighton & Hove Albion making just one short of 200 appearances and scoring 32 goals.

He was arguably the stand-out player in an otherwise gloom-laden period for the club when off-field issues overshadowed the playing side.

Minton’s spell in Seagulls’ colours remarkably straddled the reigns of five managers and he eventually left the south to rejoin one of them, Brian Horton, at Port Vale.

It was Liam Brady who brought him to the Albion on a free transfer and it is good to read how he viewed the genial Irishman as “like a father figure to me” and “somebody who had great confidence in my ability during his spell as manager”.

He made his Brighton debut away to Swansea in August 1994 and remained a mainstay of the midfield until the summer of 1999.

It doesn’t say a huge amount about the rest of the Albion side in the 1997-98 season that Minton was the top scorer with seven goals.

It’s to his credit though that, the following season, despite Albion finishing a lowly 17^th in the fourth tier, Minton was chosen by his fellow professionals in the division in the PFA team of the year.

In the October 2017 issue (no.9) of The Albion Mag (below), Tom Stewart featured Minton as one of his cult heroes of yesteryear.

Not exactly a glowing endorsement – “a vaguely skillful midfielder in an era featuring some of the poorest Albion players of all time” – Stewart nonetheless reckoned for the five seasons he was at the club he was “probably our most talented player”.

He went on to say: “Minton stood out from the crowd purely because he had a bit of nous and finesse surrounded by fairly untalented ‘grafters’ and was the only real shining light of that era.”

Stewart posed the conundrum: “Perhaps Minton is a tale of a player with unfulfilled potential, or perhaps he is a player who was decent at Divison Three level but struggled to make an impact at a higher level, or perhaps he was just an alright player in an awful team. Or is he a combination of the three?”

In April 2017, Brighton & Hove Independent gathered together player and fan memories of Albion’s iconic former home, the Goldstone Ground, and Minton was among the contributors.

“I loved the Goldstone, it was a great stadium and it’s a shame it got sold off,” he said. “The fans were all brilliant. I’m not too sure if they took to me in the first couple of years I was there, but the last two or three seasons I got on really well with them. “They were always fantastic and got right behind their side at the Goldstone. You don’t see that at a lot of teams.”

Born on 28 December 1973 in Hackney, Minton initially started training with Arsenal but, as a Spurs fan, he jumped at the chance to join Tottenham as a schoolboy.

“I joined the club as a 10-year-old after the scout Dick Moss watched me playing a district game for Hackney against Enfield in which I scored a hat-trick,” Minton recounted in a January 2018 interview with superhotspur.com (pictured below).

“Joining as a 10-year-old and leaving as a 20-year-old gave me 10 very valuable learning years at a club I supported, and also one of the country’s top clubs which is steeped in so much tradition and history. Those treasured memories will forever live with me.”

Like fellow Spurs schoolboy Junior McDougald, at 14 Minton was invited to become a member of the FA School of Excellence at Lilleshall.

Having successfully worked his way through the ranks, Minton was given his first team debut by boss Peter Shreeves on 25 April 1992 in a game that turned out to be Gary Lineker’s last home match for Spurs.

If reaching that promised land wasn’t good enough, the dream debut was complete when he scored in a 3-3 draw against Everton, with Paul Stewart and Paul Allen also on the scoresheet.

However, Minton only played two more games for the Spurs first team: one in the league seven days later in a 3-1 defeat away to Manchester United, the other in the league cup, going on as a substitute for Darren Anderton in a 3-1 win over Brentford.

Managerial upheaval probably didn’t help his cause: Terry Venables had been in charge when he joined, after Shreeves’ spell in charge, Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence took over, and it was Ossie Ardiles who ended up releasing him on a free transfer in July 1994.

It’s interesting to read that Minton’s former youth team manager, Keith Waldon, was disappointed that Minton didn’t make more of a name for himself. Waldon told superhotspur.com: “One of those who disappointed me with how far he went in the game was Jeffrey Minton.

“Jeffrey had phenomenal ability with his feet, was quick off the mark and had wonderful skill. But he didn’t go as far as I hoped he would, and I think that he’d tell you that he wasn’t the most disciplined person, but he was a wonderful player.”

While welcoming the chance to play first division football for Port Vale after his Brighton career came to a close, he struggled to settle in the Potteries and in his second year there moved on loan to second division Rotherham United, who he helped to promotion.

He then returned to London for the 2001-02 season and played 39 league and cup games for Third Division Leyton Orient.

Although offered a contract extension by the O’s, Minton says excessive demands from his agent scuppered a deal and he ended up playing non-league football with Canvey Island for three seasons.

He moved on to Chelmsford City in August 2006 where he played for a further three years, had a brief spell at Welling United and ended his playing days with Isthmian League Ware.