The 10 best January transfer window signings in Brighton history
Brighton & Hove Albion have brought in their fair share of rubbish in the winter transfer window, but there have also been a number of hugely successful arrivals as our list of the best 10 January signings sets out to prove.
For every disaster like Steve Thomson, David Gonzalez, Shane McFaul or Jurgen Locadia, there is a player who has made a massive contribution to the Albion in helping the club from struggling in League One to becoming a Premier League side.
Here are the WeAreBrighton.com top 10 January transfer window signings in Brighton history.
10) Craig Noone
Kicking off our countdown of the top 10 best January transfer window signings in Brighton history is Craig Noone, a £250,000 capture from Plymouth Argyle in 2011 who was the final piece of the jigsaw when it came to Gus Poyet’s He Who Must Not Be Named’s League One champions.
The only position in which that incredible squad looked weak was out on the left, a situation Poyet You Know Who addressed with the arrival of Noone, who had been the best player on the pitch when the Albion won 2-0 at Home Park four months earlier.
Not many opponents gave Inigo Calderon a torrid time that season, but Noone had with a performance so good that it stuck in the minds of the 338 Brighton fans who had undertaken September’s long Tuesday night trip to Devon.
His pace and trickery made him an instant favourite with the Withdean crowd and he went onto play Premier League football with Cardiff City after joining the Bluebirds for £1.5 million in August 2012, returning a significant profit for the Albion. Noone is also the only player on this list to have worked on the roof of Steve Gerrard’s house.
9) Steve Sidwell
Dale Stephens and Beram Kayal were excellent in the 2015-16 season but beyond them, Chris Hughton’s midfield cupboard was bare. When one or both of them were missing, the Albion had to rely on Rohan Ince or Jake Forster-Caskey. Not quite the same.
Which is what makes Steve Sidwell’s arrival from Stoke City in January 2016 one of the most underrated signings Brighton have made in the last decade, as well as being one of the best of the winter transfer window.
Sidwell added depth to Hughton’s options in the middle of the park, going onto play 56 times over the course of the next 18 months. He brought top flight experience to a squad which was a little lacking in that department and the knowledge of what it took to get out of the Championship.
Oh, and he could also score from the half way line. That goal at Bristol City is enough to put him into the top 10 by itself.
8) Tariq Lamptey
A recent article on 90min was greeted by a lot of mockery from Brighton fans as it attempted to name the best January signings that every Premier League club has made. Their choice for the Albion – Tariq Lamptey.
It smacked of laziness to name Lamptey, especially when you consider the contributions that the names we have put ahead of him on our list have made to the Albion. A little bit of research would have shown the author that in the grand scheme of things, Lamptey has not achieved much in a Brighton shirt – yet.
What he could achieve of course is frightening. In terms of ability, Lamptey is the Albion’s best January signing. The £4 million paid is probably the best value for money too, especially as he seems destined to move to one of Europe’s biggest clubs for a fee at least 10 times that.
If Lamptey stays beyond the summer and helps Brighton push into the top 10 of the Premier League as Tony Bloom has publicly stated is the aim for the Albion, then one day very soon he could be much higher up this list. And nobody could have any arguments.
7) Matthew Upson
The January transfer window of 2013 was one of the best Brighton have ever had, a fact reflected by two signings made by Poyet The Dark Lord filling the next two spots in our top 10.
Coming in at seventh is Matthew Upson. Less than three years after he had finished as England’s joint top scorer at the 2010 World Cup, Poyet You Know Who signed Upson on loan from Stoke to solve a defensive crisis caused by injury to Adam El-Abd and the fact that Poyet did not feel a 21-year-old Lewis Dunk had the temperament to be completely trusted in a promotion push following his sending off away at Crystal Palace after only eight minutes.
Upson proved to be a revelation alongside Gordon Greer. So strong was their partnership that Brighton made the playoffs twice in the 18 months they were paired together, El-Abd had to leave the Amex in search of first team football and Dunk managed just four starts in the whole of the 2013-14 campaign.
That season saw Upson crowned Player of the Year before he departed for Leicester City, funnily enough the exact same move that the next man on our list also made…
6) Leonardo Ulloa
Leonardo Ulloa cost £2 million in January 2013 from Spanish side Almeria as Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named sought to fill the hole which had been left in the striker department following the controversial decision to allow Glenn Murray to leave on a free 18 months earlier.
The Man From Argentina scored on his Albion debut against Arsenal in the FA Cup fourth round and from there, he never looked back. The first Amex hat-trick followed against Huddersfield Town and then a brace in the St Patrick’s Day Massacre as Crystal Palace were hammered 3-0 guaranteed hero status after just two months at the club.
Ulloa’s goals helped Poyet You Know Who lead the Albion to the playoffs in 2012-13. The striker’s contribution was even more pivotal in the following campaign, when he scored 16 of Brighton’s 55 league goals to help Oscar Garcia deliver another top six finish with a much weaker squad than Poyet The Dark Lord had worked with.
The goal which secured that season’s playoff place was scored by Ulloa and is now one of the most famous in Albion history, coming as it did in the final minute of the final game of the season to ensure a 2-1 win over Nottingham Forest and send a packed away end at the City Ground mad. Your correspondent’s knees have still not recovered from going flying when it hit the back of the net.
5) Inigo Calderon
Within two months of his appointment, Poyet He Who Must Not Be Named knew what he had to do if he was to get Brighton playing his style of football which would eventually sweep the Albion to the 2010-11 League One title – sign two ball playing full backs.
Marcos Painter came in on the left, a man who was not far off making this list of the 10 best Brighton January transfer window signings. On the right arrived Inigo Calderon, a free transfer who had been without a club for six months after being released by Deportivo Alaves from the Spanish third tier and who had been rejected by Gillingham, Norwich City and Swansea City following trials.
The rest, as they say, is history. Calderon became one of Poyet’s You Know Who’s most trusted lieutenants and vice-captain, playing 232 times for the Albion and scoring a healthy total for a right back of 19 goals. In the 2014-15 season, Calderon was named Player of the Season.
Calderon’s impact was not just restricted to what happened on the pitch either. He immersed himself in Albion in the Community by becoming one of the charity’s biggest supporters and seemed to love everything about playing for Brighton and the city itself. A genuinely fantastic guy who is quite rightly one of the most popular players the Albion have ever had.
4) Beram Kayal
It is hard to describe how bad Brighton were in the first half of the 2014-15 season under Sami Hyypia. The club had rather boldly gone with the slogan ‘One Team, One Ambition’ for the campaign when ‘League One Team, League One Ambition’ would have been more apt.
Then Chris Hughton rode in on his white horse to save the day. His first permanent signing as Albion manager was Beram Kayal for a bargain £250,000 from Celtic.
From the moment Kayal scored on his debut in a 3-2 defeat against Nottingham Forest, it was clear he was a class above any other midfielder Brighton had – especially with Dale Stephens spending much of the campaign on the shelf.
Kayal’s quality helped Hughton drag the Seagulls to Championship survival. His partnership with Stephens over the course of the next two seasons then formed the bedrock of the promotion winning side. The only regret about his time at the Amex is that injuries denied him the chance to prove himself in the Premier League.
3) Dale Stephens
When Liam Bridcutt forced through a £3 million move to Sunderland in January 2014, it looked like a disaster. Brighton were losing their best central midfielder, a man who had been voted Player of the Season in both 2011-12 and 2012-13 and who Poyet The Dark Lord had once described as being good enough to play for Real Madrid, with typical Gus You Know Who gusto.
How do you replace a man like that? The answer turned out to be by paying £800,000 to Charlton Athletic for the services of Dale Stephens, who would go onto become one of the first names on the Brighton team sheet over the next six-and-a-half years and a major reason as to why the Albion won promotion to the Premier League and established themselves there.
Stephens played 223 times for Brighton. For longevity, success and the level of football played at, you could argue that Stephens is the second best defensive midfielder the club have ever had after Jimmy Case.
That is not bad company to be in – and the reason why he is number three on our list. Hopefully, history will judge him kinder than some Albion fans did towards the end of his time at the Amex.
2) Anthony Knockaert
Brighton were hard to beat in the first half of the 2015-16 season, going the first 21 games of the campaign undefeated. The problem Hughton had though was that his side did not win as many games as they should, especially away from home where Liam Rosenior was often deployed as a defence-minded winger.
And then Anthony Knockaert arrived. Hughton forked out £2.5 million to Standard Liège for the services of the French magician and suddenly, the Albion became a side who could beat anyone else in the Championship because on his day, Knockaert was unplayable.
After playoff semi final heartbreak against Sheffield Wednesday, Knockaert led the charge for helping Brighton going one better in 2016-17. He scored 15 times from out wide as promotion was secured and was a very deserved winner of Championship Player of the Year.
One of the most exciting individuals ever to play for Brighton, supporters loved him as much as he loved them. That two-year period between 2016 and 2018 was a brilliant time to be an Albion fan and Knockaert was front and centre of it.
1) Glenn Murray
Sitting at number one spot in our list of the top 10 best January transfer window signings in Brighton history is of course Glenn Murray. Signed by Dean Wilkins from Rochdale for £300,000 in January 2008, he fired the Albion from League One to the Premier League in two separate spells.
Murray then almost single-handedly kept Hughton’s side in the top flight for their first two campaigns among the elite, scoring 36% of the Seagulls’ goals over the course of the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons – no club has ever been so reliant on one player to score for them since the Premier League was invented in 1992 than Brighton on Murray.
His haul of 111 goals means he is one of only two players to pass a century for the Seagulls and leaves him second in the all-time list behind Tommy Cook.
A bona fide club legend, Murray is not just Brighton’s best ever January signing – he is arguably one of the best players ever to play for the Albion.
