Brighton are a shining example of how a good club should be run, and with Sunderland hoping to follow in their footsteps, we thought we’d pick the brains of a fan who has seen the club My body is growing right before my eyes.
When Brighton won their first promotion to the Premier League in 2017, the transfer strategy in the first two seasons favored buying experienced players from abroad that other Premier League clubs might overlook for trying to help keep Albion at bay in the first place.
Success has been mixed here; Pascal Gross for £3 million is currently considered one of the best deals in Brighton history.
Alireza Jahanbakhsh for £17m and Jurgen Locadia for £15m, less.
After surviving two seasons, the strategy changed.
Chris Hughton was sacked, Graham Potter came in and introduced a more progressive brand of football.
This is when Albion started recruiting young players with potential.
The idea is quite clear: Brighton cannot compete financially with the Premier League’s biggest clubs.
But what the club can do is use the algorithms and data analysis that made Tony Bloom very rich through the professional game and apply them to identify individuals around the world.
world whose numbers show they could one day become the players all these big clubs want.
to sign..
Bringing in Dan Ashworth as the FA’s technical director was crucial.
He oversaw England’s DNA project which aimed to transform our national team from a laughingstock into one capable of challenging and winning trophies at every level.
With Brighton, he did the same.
It seems simple, but from U18 to U23 to the first team all start playing the same.
Ashworth also helped set up the club’s loan route.
Most of Albion’s best young talent spent a year in League Two, then League One, then the Championship before breaking into the first team.
Ben White, for example, moved from Newport County to Peterborough via Leeds to join the senior team.
A year later he was sold to Arsenal for £50 million.
Newcastle fans were delighted when Ashworth accepted the Saudis’ cash offer at St James’ Park, believing he is the man who can identify and sign all the talent.
But it is Bloom and his algorithms who are responsible.
What Ashworth did was put the mechanisms in place.
Nothing has changed since he left, which is why most people at Brighton are quite relaxed about his departure.
I think the most important thing is that the players know that if they sign for Brighton it is a stepping stone to bigger things.
Fans of most clubs will be reluctant to accept this.
However, the people of Albion wear it as a badge of honor.
A South American prodigy could go straight to Manchester United or Chelsea, but chances are he’ll lose his way and his career will never take off as expected.
But coming to Brighton, they will have the opportunity to advance to the first team.
They can grow and improve.
And then, in two or three years, Albion will facilitate that dream move to Chelsea or United – provided the buying club matches Bloom’s valuation.
Evan Ferguson recently said he had a choice between Liverpool and Brighton.
He chose Brighton because he knew it would be better for his career there.
If he goes to Anfield, what are the chances of him scoring a hat-trick in the Premier League against Newcastle at the age of 18?
This requires a lot of patience.
Potter oversaw 14 consecutive home games without a win, a club record that even eclipsed the record achieved by Albion, who finished 91st/92nd in the Football League in 1997-98.
He also has the dubious honor of worst start to a top-flight season after two round 18 wins to start the 2020-21 season.
Brighton have lost six games in a row most recently in March 2022 and failed to score a goal at the Amex in the three months between January and April 2022.
At most other clubs in the country, fans Tom will go crazy and the president will make me have an itchy finger.
However, not Bloom and not Albion fans.
The wait for everything to come together was worth it.
There was a lot of skepticism at first.
Why Brighton spent £8.
5m on a 21-year-old Argentinian who looks like an extra in Home Alone and can’t get a work permit while the club is in a relegation battle ?
Alexis Mac Allister didn’t end up doing too bad.
Selling white is a great moment because it justifies this approach.
The money Arsenal paid him was reinvested in Marc Cucurella and the £62m paid to him was reinvested in Pervis Estupinan.
And so the wheel continues to turn.
Bloom answers this question better than anyone.
Caring about your players and being able to sell them means you’re doing something right.
It’s better to see famous players leave than to see no one want to sign someone from you.
Again, this means accepting Albion’s place in the football hierarchy.
Players like Mac Allister, Caicedo and White have done well enough for Brighton that Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal will want to pay big money for them.
No one growing up in Argentina or Ecuador dreams of playing for Brighton.
They want to play for the Elite Six European Super League and win trophies.
The Albions take advantage of their desire to achieve this and help them achieve it.
You can be bitter when a player leaves, or you can wish them well and be proud of the club’s role in helping them on their journey.
For example, Mac Allister arrived here at age 21, speaking no English after waiting a year for a work permit.
Three and a half years later, he left, a World Cup winner and one of the best all-round midfielders in the Premier League.
Watching a player’s journey unfold before your eyes is a treat.
Great question.
Because although we have talked about recruitment, the often overlooked aspect is that the environment at a football club is arguably more important.
Brighton has created a place where young people from all over the world are supported and can develop without pressure.
The atmosphere around the club is first class and that is why the players excel at Albion in a way they cannot do elsewhere.
You only have to look at the looting of our club by Chelsea to realize this.
Cucurella and Graham Potter played brilliantly at Brighton but as soon as they left they became a laughing stock.
Caicedo hasn’t uprooted any trees yet and would be surprised to see Robert Sanchez succeed at Stamford Bridge.
On the other hand, Billy Gilmour has struggled with Chelsea but is now seen as Caicedo’s successor in the Albion midfield.
As Roberto De Zerbi said when the Caicedo-Chelsea saga was unfolding:
“Other clubs can buy our players.
But they cannot buy our soul and spirit.
It’s a quote that perfectly sums up Albion at the moment.
I think it’s a bit different trying to do it in the Premier League versus the Championship.
Brighton had no choice but to survive year by year while the plan bore fruit; Sunderland face utter chaos in this league, where literally anyone can be relegated while still fighting for promotion.
Ultimately, it is important to have the utmost trust in the owner.
Bloom sponsored Brighton from League One to the Europa League.
From what I see, Sunderland now have managers who want to do well for the club and they seem to have half a brain.
This is in stark contrast to a lot of English football.
It doesn’t happen overnight and there will be speed bumps along the way, but results like beating Southampton 5-0 with so many bright young players is something you cling to when the downturns don’t.
can avoid coming.
For Brighton, just take very small steps and everything will fall into place.
If Sunderland make the same journey as Albion then the wait will have been worth it.
Those 14 home games without a win prove to be a price worth paying when Brighton face Ajax, Marseille and AEK Athens next month.