Chris Hughton spent £40m on eight players in the summer – for a promoted team to build a competitive top-flight squad for that money looks almost like witchcraft.
It takes Neymar just under six weeks to earn £3m. This season the Chinese side Meixian Techand reportedly gave their players a £3m bonus each, just for winning promotion. The payoff that Claudio Ranieri received after being sacked by Leicester was also £3m.
These days £3m does not get you much. Unless you are Brighton that is. For their £3m they got Pascal Gross, the player who has registered the most assists of anyone playing for a club outside the top six this season.
When Gross’s transfer from Ingolstadt was announced last May the German club’s then sporting director, Thomas Linke, spoke of him like a son leaving home for university, with sadness but acceptance the time had come for him to spread his wings. “Pascal will certainly be remembered as one of the defining players of the club,” Linke said. “It is only a logical consequence that he has attracted attention ... we also appreciate Pascal’s desire to take the next step after five years.”
Which is no surprise considering Gross created the most chances in the Bundesliga for two seasons in a row, not bad in a team that were relegated. And he has brought that form to the Premier League, adapting instantly to a new team, division and country.
He is not alone in this. Davy Pröpper has formed a terrific midfield trio with Gross and Dale Stephens. Mat Ryan took a while to settle but has established himself as one of the more reliable goalkeepers in the Premier League. José Izquierdo and Ezequiel Schelotto were eased in and are valuable members of the first team.
Brighton, in their first Premier League season, seem to have mastered one of the most difficult and random elements of modern football: the transfer market. That there is barely a dud among their recruits is remarkable when you consider the millions spent/wasted by clubs which are supposed to be more practiced at this sort of thing.
Even more remarkably, they have done this on a budget. Transfer-fee inflation seemed as if it had killed the concept of the bargain but in the summer Brighton spent roughly £40m on eight players, signing two more on loan. For a newly promoted team to build a competitive top-flight squad for that sort of money in today’s market looks almost like witchcraft.
In the summer a couple of players – the midfielder Renato Neto and striker Raphael Dwamena – failed medicals. A couple have not settled and the loanee Izzy Brown injured a cruciate ligament; but probably the only new arrival who has not worked out is Markus Suttner.
When your biggest transfer mistake is a £2m left-back who might not have been first-choice anyway, you are probably doing all right.
There will always be an element of luck and serendipity involved. Had Neto arrived they probably would not have signed Pröpper, and who knows whether the Brazilian would have settled in to the side quite as well.
But it is the latter point that is crucial. Finding players is only half the challenge; making them part of the team is even tougher. Chris Hughton believes their success this season is a consequence of good work in previous years. Sound purchases when Brighton were in the Championship – Anthony Knockaert, Shane Duffy, Stephens – helped the new class fit in nicely.
“My first full season started well, which meant the ones that arrived after that came into a good group,” the manager said this week. “Then the ones that came in the next summer were joining a team who’d got into the play-offs. It’s certainly easier if you’re bringing players into a team that’s already got a bit of momentum. This season was the unknown but the way they’ve integrated – I’ve been delighted.”
Perhaps that is the key: it is not so much that Brighton have signed good players but the right players. Knowing which players are right is in theory very difficult but when there is a plan and some consistency behind the scenes it becomes easier.
Brighton are understandably reluctant to crow too much. Their head of recruitment, Paul Winstanley, who presides over a department that combines scouting and analysis, presumably does not want to tempt fate. They will be wary of cautionary tales such as Steve Walsh, lauded at Leicester for unearthing Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kanté, only to move to Everton and find himself handing over £45m for Gylfi Sigurdsson.
Unless something calamitous happens in the coming weeks Brighton will avoid relegation, and you can throw in progression to the FA Cup quarter-finals, where they play Manchester United on Saturday, as a bonus. A job (nearly) well done, on the pitch and off it.
Who knows for how much longer Brighton will be able to find bargain gems such as Gross. But for now they can be satisfied that they are probably the shrewdest side in the Premier League.
(The Guardian)
