Billy Reid had no hesitation ending a decade as a number one and going back to being an assistant.

Not once he met Graham Potter.

Albion's head coach made an instant impression on Reid, who is Potter's trusted aide again at the Amex, having worked together at Swedish club Ostersund and Swansea.

Scot Reid managed Clyde and Hamilton, steering Academicals to promotion and seventh in the Scottish Premier League, after playing in midfield for both clubs.

The Argus: The 55-year-old Glaswegian teamed up with Potter at Ostersund, a partnership brokered by his ex-Hamilton assistant and Luton Town chief Graeme Jones.

Reid said: "Graham (Potter) was looking for an assistant manager, second tier Sweden. I was 50-years-old and I thought 'I'm not sure about this'.

"I looked them up, a small club, made their way up from the fourth tier.

"I took my wife over, went to the first game. They were playing against a team going up. One team were giants and Ostersund were a small, small team.

"It ended up one each but Ostersund were great. I went to watch them train the next day and Graham said 'What do you think?' I said I love what you are trying to do here. We agreed terms and I'm still working with Graham.

"I had ten years as a number one and I probably wouldn't have gone as a number two to everybody, but the feeling that Graham gave me, how we worked with his players, how his team played and the way he spoke to me - he didn't need to convince me, it just felt natural that I could go and work with this fella."

Potter and Reid are half of a four-part management unit also including coach Bjorn Hamberg and Kyle Macauley, who has been added to Albion's player recruitment department.

Reid said: "He (Potter) has been fantastic for my career. The four of us have been together for almost seven years. We work as a team and I can't speak highly enough of him.

"He lets me get on with my job. He is easy going, with a temper. When he turns he turns and the players will know that.

"He is very clear in his mind of the idea he puts across to his players. That's why he's had the success he's had and he knows how to delegate really well.

"He's worked with an influx of foreign players, because Ostersund had players from all over the world. That will serve him well, I think in his time in England because most teams have got a lot of foreign players as well.

"But you have always got to remember that English element as well and he can deal with that.

"Swansea last year was a first time in British football for us. It was a great challenge, a club that had just been relegated.

"By the end of the season I think we had made big progress in terms of playing style, performances. We had a good (FA) Cup run, played Man City, almost turned them over."

The Argus: The decision to switch from Wales to the south coast was not as straightforward as it may have seemed from the outside.

Reid said: "It's easy to say Brighton, Premier League, you couldn't knock that back. But we had signed at Swansea for three years, my family are older but Graham has got young kids and he'd moved them.

"It was a three-year project at least (Swansea), we expected to be there. We loved it, it was a fantastic place to live and the year's work was showing really good signs.

"Some of the younger players had broken through. Daniel James, who has gone to Manchester United, hadn't really played a game before we got there.

"There was a lot of real, positive momentum, but at the end of the day it was Graham that made the decision. What ever decision he made I'd have stood by him.

"He didn't make the decision straight away. He thought things over with his family, and rightly so, but the lure of Brighton - we'd heard it was a fantastic club with the progress they'd made and the infrastructure, so it was probably an opportunity that Graham felt he had to take."

Reid believes the season the management group had at Swansea will prove useful.

"I think the Championship can be just as difficult," he said. "It's a mess at times, you cannot control things, maybe the teams are more structured (in the Premier League).

"That may help if you are structured. But it's a new start for us, we are just getting to know the players, their strengths. Over the pre-season games we'll find out more about them, they will find out more about us."