Monday 25 February 2019 17:25, UK
Chris Hughton says it is not difficult to prepare for Jamie Vardy because his game plan is well known ahead of Brighton's trip to Leicester on Tuesday.
The Seagulls boss heaped praise on the 32-year-old former England international, who has scored eight goals in 23 Premier League games this season.
Brighton have not registered a victory in their last six top-flight games, slipping to 16th and three points above the bottom three, while the Foxes sacked Claude Puel after a 4-1 defeat to Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Quizzed on his opinion of Vardy, Leicester's top-scorer in the Premier League this season, Hughton said: "It's not difficult to plan because you know generally what he's going to do.
"The difficulty is that he does it very well and he's somebody that likes to run in the channels, likes to run on beyond, great pace, wonderful finishing ability so they are the things that every team that plays against him knows.
"He's a quality player and he does it very, very well. But he is playing in a team that have got a lot of very good individual players and he is not the only one we will have to work well against."
Despite their recent woes in the Premier League this season, Brighton have impressed in the FA Cup, advancing to the quarter-finals where they face Sky Bet Championship side Millwall in March.
When told that 43 per cent of fans would take winning the tournament if it resulted in relegation, as Wigan experienced in 2013, Hughton added: "For me it's a no-brainer. We need to be in this division next season.
"The club have worked incredibly hard, for a number of years, even before I got here four years ago, to get to this level so that's the first [reason].
"There is no guarantee if you drop out of this division - Burnley did it and came straight back, good team, good management - there is no guarantee when or if you are going to get back into this division.
"We've worked so hard to get here so it is important that we stay here."
