Brighton chief Paul Barber admits Dan Ashworth had a hand in identifying David Weir as his successor as sporting director.
Ashworth left Brighton last year for Newcastle United.
Barber told the High Performance Podcast: "First of all, Dan is one of if not the best technical director that I've worked with. David Weir who is now his successor is going to be as good in his own way. Dan and I used to talk openly about what we would do if he were to leave, because again if you are building succession plans, you've almost got to understand who the current technical director thinks the good up and coming technical directors are in order to get the best succession plan in place.
"We talked about Weir and his background as a top-level player for Everton, Rangers and Scotland, and we talked about the role he was doing for us at the time which was a loans manager role. We talked about his education, and we realised pretty quickly that Dan's successor was in the building.
"It was just a case of making sure we helped David as much as possible to realise that potential, and 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 but wanted to. We gave David about six months as acting technical director, it was a chance for us to see if what we saw in him was going to come to pass, and also for David to have a good look at the role and see if he liked it. Thankfully, we liked him and he liked us and therefore our successor to Dan was there.
"But internally, we talked very positively about having the talent in the building to overcome the setback of Dan deciding to leave for 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 prepare for it and we did."