Feyenoord want to take Jahanbakhsh back to the Eredivisie

The nightmare Brighton and Hove Albion career of the Seagulls’ record buy Alireza Jahanbakhsh could be coming to an end with Feyenoord rumoured to want take the Iranian international back to the Netherlands.

The winger cost the Albion £17m when signing from AZ Alkmaar among much fanfare last summer. Things haven’t really gone to plan however and in his first season in the Premier League, Jahanbakhsh managed a grand total of zero goals and zero assists from 25 games in all competitions.

That was in stark contrast to his form in his final season at AZ. Jahanbakhsh topped the Eredivisie scoring charts in 2017-18 with 22 goals and contributed 14 assists as his side finished third behind champions Ajax and runners up PSV Eindhoven.

Some believe the reason that Jahanbakhsh hasn’t shown that sort of form in England is because he was misused by Chris Hughton.

Their theory goes that he is an out-and-out attacking winger who couldn’t thrive in a system or with tactics as conservative as Hughton’s.

That’s a nice idea until you consider the fact that Solly March and Anthony Knockaert were both asked to do exactly the same job – and Knockaert still managed to weigh in with four goals and seven assists and March helped with one goal and six assists.

With an apparently more attacking manager at the helm in Graham Potter, some Albion fans and the whole of Iran are predicting that we’ll see the best of Jahanbakhsh in his second season at the Amex.

The other possible reasoning for Jahanbakhsh having been so poor in 2018-19 is that he simply isn’t good enough for Premier League football.

He wouldn’t be the first player to be brought across the North Sea with high expectations, only to have been unable to deal with the step up in standard.

Vincent Janssen, Memphis Depay and Ricky van Wolfswinkel were all big money signings who arrived from the Netherlands and failed to fire in English football.

Closer to the home, the Albion have signed Jurgen Locadia, Elvis Manu, Danny Holla and Roland Bergkamp from the land of cheese and windmills over the course of the last decade, none of whom have gone onto be what you could consider a success.

Given Jahanbakhsh’s previous record in the Netherlands, it will come as little surprise that there are suitors willing to take him back. Feyenoord are one of those, according to reports from the Netherlands. The question then is whether the Albion will be happy to let him go?

One snag appears to be that Feyenoord are only after a loan deal. There is little chance that any club in an Eredivisie which is quite weak financially could afford to either buy or pay the wages of Jahanbakhsh, with the possible exception of Ajax who are in a strong position following their recent run to the semi finals of the Champions League.

Brighton would gain little from such a temporary switch, other than allowing Jahanbakhsh to try and regain form and confidence from a season back in the Netherlands.

That would seem a pointless move however. Should he spend the coming season on loan at De Kuip, then by the time he returned to the Amex for the 2020-21 campaign the Albion could well have moved on in terms of playing style and personnel should Potter’s appointment be a success.

As already mentioned, it also seems unlikely we’ll find anyone with both the money and the will to sign a player who was performed so badly over the course of the past year.

Should Potter come to the same conclusion that many of us have about Jahanbakhsh, then he may well find it hard to get him out the door as a result – certainly on a permanent basis.

It’s becoming clear that the new Albion boss wants a new winger. An £18m deal for Genk’s Leandro Trossard looks likely to be completed in the coming days, which would leave the Albion with five senior wingers – Jahanbakhsh, March, Knockaert, Jose Izquierdo and the new man.

Izquierdo has undergone another operation surgery this summer so when we’ll see him in an Albion shirt again remains to be seen.

Potter therefore might decide he needs the services of five wide men until the Colombian can prove he is fit and firing again. He’ll surely want to take a look at Jahanbakhsh himself in pre-season anyway before making any decisions.

Whatever happens in the coming weeks will tell us a lot about whether Potter rates Jahanbakhsh and what his plans are for the club’s record buy over the coming season.

If Jahanbakhsh remains at the club despite interest from other parties, then it will show that Potter believes he can get something out of the Iranian that Hughton was unable to.

If he is allowed to move to Feyneoord or another club on the continent, then it will confirm many Albion fans’ suspicions that this was a desperately poor and expensive piece of recruitment.