How much is Yves Bissouma worth to Brighton & Hove Albion?
When Yves Bissouma picked out the top corner of the Blackpool goal with an absolute rocket of strike, no watching Brighton supporter was that surprised – in fact, the most common reaction was that it merely served to add several more million to his worth.
The lack of shock at Bissouma’s Goal of the Season contender was because he does not score tap ins. All four of his Brighton career goals so far have come from outside the box, one of the many, many skills the midfielder possesses that mark him out as a player destined for the top.
Other clubs are starting to realise this. Bissouma has been linked with Real Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal. Jurgen Klopp’s champions led the sports betting market back in December as a 3/1 shot to be the Malian’s next club.
A January moves seems unlikely but if Bissouma maintains his current form over the course of the second half of the Premier League season, then Tony Bloom should be inundated with offers come the summer.
The lucky club who sign Bissouma will get a player who has the potential to become one of the best box-to-box midfielders in the world. It is scary how good he is and at 24-years-old, he is still several years away from his peak.
Bissouma is dynamic. He covers a lot of ground. He can pick a pass. He knows how to tackle. He reads the game. He can carry the ball. He essentially excels at every job a midfielder does and once Potter settled on where to use him in his team, there has been no looking back.
What has turned him from a prodigious talent but one who did not seem to have a best position – Chris Hughton tried him as a number 10, a central midfielder and a holding midfielder – into one of the most sought-after players in the Premier League is the positional discipline and maturity that Potter has instilled in him.
Potter deserves a huge amount of credit for his role in Bissouma’s emergence. His selection in place of the suspended Dale Stephens for the trip to Crystal Palace in December 2019 seemed mad at the time as Bissouma had never really displayed the skillset needed to fill the unglamorous defensive midfield role.
The sight of Bissouma half-heartedly tracking back in a 2-1 defeat to Leicester City in February 2019 or his wandering around aimlessly like a bloke who could not be bothered as Plucky Little Bournemouth scored five unanswered goals at the Amex summed up his first season at the Amex – a player with the potential to be incredible on his day, but one with a lack of appreciation for hard work. He just wanted to do the fun stuff in football.
That should not have been a surprise though. He arrived in England as a 21-year-old and it was always going to take time for him to mature and adjust to the Premier League.
Hughton knew that and managed his game time and expectations in the 2018-19 season. It would have been easy for Hughton to chuck a £15 million signing straight in to justify the fee paid, but instead he took the slow approach. Again, good management.
Potter continued in that vein until Palace away when Bissouma made himself undroppable. Since that 1-1 draw at Selhurst Park, Yves Bissouma has become the first name on the team sheet and has worth has been shooting up.
Ironically given the plaudits his goal against Blackpool gained, the one thing that lets him down is his scoring record. Four goals in 76 appearance for Brighton and as already noted, all of those from outside the box.
If Bissouma starts popping up inside the area to contribute five or six goals a season, then his transformation into a genuine, world class box-to-box midfielder will be complete and it will add a lot more money to his price tag.
So, how much is Yves Bissouma actually worth? That is the million dollar – or sixty, seventy, eighty million pound – question. Brighton’s valuation is likely to be far higher than what any suitor is expecting to pay, which is testament to just how important he has become.
To his suitors, Bissouma is a 24-year-old midfielder who still has a huge amount of scope to improve but who has only been a first team regular for a bottom-half Premier League side for a little over a year and does not score many goals.
The Manchester Uniteds, Liverpools and Real Madrids of this world would probably be willing to go to £40 million to £50 million, but no more.
Now consider his worth to Brighton. Keeping Bissouma could be the difference between Premier League survival and relegation to the Championship.
In the 2019-20 season, Brighton raked in £113.5 million from being a top flight club. If Bissouma’s departure resulted in relegation, then you could argue that he is worth in excess of £100 million to the Albion.
Call it the Wilfried Zaha Paradox. Every year, at least one big club is linked with the Tom Daley Tribute Act and are willing to pay £50 million. Palace slap a £100 million price tag on him and no deal ever materialises.
Clearly, Zaha is not worth £100 million to any buying club which is why he remains at Selhurst. If Palace were to sell him, they would almost certainly be relegated and so the only way that they could justify allowing him to leave and accepting a place in the Championship is if the fee compensates for the dramatic drop in income which would come from being relegated.
Brighton are not the one-man team which Palace are. That is evidenced by the interest in Ben White and Tariq Lamptey, who have both attracted as much attention from England’s biggest clubs as Bissouma. But Bissouma is still vital to survival.
What could make selling Bissouma a little easier is that the Albion have already planned for life after him. £9.5 million signing from Lech Poznan Jakub Moder is a player very much in the mould of Bissouma with all the attributes needed to become a true box-to-box midfielder.
Moder is already a full Polish international at the age of 21. Poland are no slouches on the international scene, so that shows what a capable young player the Albion have added to their squad.
Brighton are also due to complete the transfer of 19-year-old Ecuadorian midfielder Moises Caicedo from Independiente del Valle. Manchester United had been involved in prolonged negotiations for Caicedo but a complex web of third-party ownership needed untangling and the Old Trafford hierarchy ultimately decided that it was more trouble than it was worth.
The Albion though appear to have found a way to the a deal, helped no doubt by their experience of signing young players direct from South America who are ‘owned’ by individuals and agents as much as clubs. They also have good relations from their previous dealings with Independiente, from whom they signed Billy Arce in 2018.
Caicedo will cost Brighton in the region of £5 million and their efforts in bringing him to England will mean that one of the hottest young properties in South America will have been signed for a bargain price. As well as United, AC Milan and West Ham United were tracking Caicedo.
Neither Moder or Caicedo is an oven-ready replacement for Bissouma, however. Yves Bissouma took 18 months of careful management to become a first team regular, transforming from a £15 million signing with potential into a player worth four times that who is one of the best in the Premier League at what he does.
It could be another 18 months before Moder establishes himself and has the same impact on games. For Caicedo, even longer – he is set to begin his career in Europe with a loan spell at Tony Bloom’s Belgian second tier club Union Saint-Gilloise.
When Brighton do sell Bissouma, they will need compensating for the fact that they are losing their best player, an individual who plays a massive role in keeping them in the Premier League and earning the £100 million in revenue which that brings, and that it could take a couple of seasons to properly replace him.
Brighton could easily demand £60 million for Bissouma and it would not be outrageous. Here at WAB Towers, we would not consider anything below £70 million, he is that good.
And every time he scores a goal like that one against Blackpool or produces another dominating midfield display as he has throughout the 2020-21 season, then his value just keeps going up.
The truth is that Yves Bissouma is almost priceless in his worth to the Albion. The club who end up signing him will have to pay big money – and he will be worth every penny.
