Sunderland: Striker Aaron Connolly talks about alcohol addiction

Connolly was a highly talented teenager who came over from Ireland when he was 15 to move to Brighton and Hove Albion.

A prolific scorer for Brighton’s under-23 team, it was not long before he was making his first Premier League start, aged just 19 in October 2019.

He scored two that day as the Seagulls beat Tottenham Hotspur 3-0, but rather than being the first step on the way to a successful career at the top level, he believes that it was exactly the opposite.

“That’s probably where my career started to go downhill when it really should have been carrying on upwards,” Connolly said.

“I just stopped doing the things that got me to that position. I just stopped working hard and you can’t do that. I started to believe the hype. I became a tough person to be around. Nobody could tell me anything.”

He only managed three more goals in the top flight as his promising youth career did not translate into sustained success at the top level.

There were loan spells with Middlesbrough in the Championship and then with Venezia in Italy’s Serie B, but that was cut short to allow Connolly to move to Hull, initially on loan before signing a one-year deal.

“The loans were a sign of what I was doing because I should have been playing week-in, week-out for Brighton,” he said. “From where I was to where I ended up, something clearly went wrong.”