Brighton chief Chris Hughton admits his second season in charge of the Canaries was the most difficult of his coaching career.

Hughton is on course to keep the Seagulls in the Premier League after restoring his reputation on the south-coast by first guiding Brighton to Championship promotion and then looking to defy the odds to stay up this season.

The experienced manager had also enjoyed success at Newcastle United, but his two-year stint at Carrow Road ended on a sour note when he was dismissed a month before the club were relegated from the Premier League in 2014.

Hughton, speaking to Planet Football, conceded the writing was on the way for some time before City's top brass acted in a failed attempt to keep the club in the Premier League.

'The hardest period I had as a manager was in my second season at Norwich,' he said.

'We finished 11th in the Premier League after my first year at the club and if I am being honest, we probably over-achieved.

'We won a game at Manchester City on the final day of the campaign that propelled us up the table and the expectation after that was that we could push on and do even more the following season.

'I knew the pressure was building for a long time before I left the club.

'It is only when you have a run of poor results that you start to consider what is going wrong and have a broader view of the everything around you, but I have a policy of never reading newspapers and that has served me well.

MORE: Have your say on our Pinkun forum'You are aware that negative things are being said when your team are losing, but the less you know about it the better.

'Sadly, some people involved in the game are affected by what the media or the fans are saying and that is when decisions are made after a few poor results.

'That is the way the game has gone and it won't change any time soon.

'If you don't like it (being sacked), then do something else with your life.

'None of us like the demand for instant success, but we know what we are getting ourselves into when we come into it, so I suppose we can have no complaints about the way the game has gone.'