Should Brighton recall Alexis Mac Allister from his loan at Boca Juniors?

He hasn’t kicked a ball in England, he’s still technically a Boca Juniors player and yet Alexis Mac Allister is already being hailed by some Brighton fans as the saviour of the Albion’s season.

The Argentinian playmaker was granted a surprise British Work Permit in the middle of January, meaning that he can now legally play in the Premier League.

Contractually, things seem like a bit of a mess. Alexis Mac Allister was loaned to Boca in the summer for the entire season with the Albion raking in a rumoured £2m from the season-long deal.

At the time, this seemed eminently sensible. There seemed little prospect of Mac Allister receiving clearance to work in England at any point over the next year; playing for one of Argentina’s biggest clubs regularly would be a big boost to the Albion’s pleas for special dispensation for Mac Allister to be considered a player of talent next time they put his case forward.

That’s all changed now though. The Albion took advantage of what they described as “An opportunity that arose to put his case in front of The FA’s panel.”

As a result, Alexis Mac Allister has his work permit and Brighton have a dilemma – do they recall him from Boca or leave him there until the end of the Argentine Superliga season in May?

The president of Boca, Jorge Amor Ameal has made it clear where his club stand on Alexis Mac Allister’s future.

The Argus reported that Ameal told listeners to Radio Nacional in Argentina, “Mac Allister will keep playing until June. Then we will speak to people from the English team, who were at our match on Sunday at La Bombonera. This has all got to happen.”

Ameal makes it sound as if Mac Allister is a Boca player and they hold all the power in deciding if and when he moves to England.

This should be taken with a pinch of salt – in the highly emotive world of South American football, a president has to try and assure his passionate and often volatile fan base that he wont be letting a player leave who is as popular as Mac Allister is with the Boca support.

What we do know is that Brighton would have to pay a compensation fee to Boca to cut short Mac Allister’s spell with the Argentine giants – something which seems only fair given that they’ve forked out £2m for his services under the illusion that he’d be theirs for an entire season.

Various reports on Twitter suggested that the compensation fee required is just £500,000. To put that into some perspective, Brighton paid five times that to sign Tudor Baluta a year ago, a player who is yet to play a minute of league football and is currently on his second loan spell away from the Amex.

Securing the services of a full Argentinian international whose performances are generating such excitement in his homeland for half a million pounds might seem like a no-brainer – especially with Brighton so lacking in a cutting edge.

The theory goes that Mac Allister would bring dynamism and an exciting new threat to Graham Potter’s Albion squad as a number 10.

Brighton’s best performances this season have come when Potter has deployed a 4-2-2-2 formation with two number 10s working in tandem.

Since Pascal Gross’ fall from favour, the Albion manager has shied away from the system with Aaron Mooy now playing as a sole playmaker. Mac Allister’s arrival would give Potter the option to consider a return to it.

Mac Allister could also bring a goal threat to a side who simply don’t take enough of their chances. Since the announcement of his work permit, he’s scored two in two games for Argentina Under 23s in their qualifying campaign for this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Watch his highlight reel from his time in Argentina and you’ll spot a bloke who can score from 20-30 yards out – something Brighton have failed to do from open play since Anthony Knockaert’s winner in the 2-1 win at Crystal Palace nearly a year ago.

Whether Mac Allister would be allowed to shoot from such distances in a Potter team where passing is everything remains to be seen.

Wouldn’t it be nice though to have the option? The only time we ever look like netting from distance is when Gross is stood over a free kick.

Even Stevie Wonder can see that Brighton are in desperate need of reinforcements, especially attacking ones. Bringing Mac Allister to the Amex would be the equivalent of making a new signing, which is why so many Brighton fans are desperate for it to happen.

The club themselves may not share supporters’ views. Take a more pragmatic, longer term look and you can see the argument that it might be better for Alexis Mac Allister and his career to remain at Boca until the summer.

How many players arrive from South America and make an instant impression on English football? Most Argentinians or Brazilians come via a spell in Europe and plenty of them take a significant amount of time to adjust to their new surroundings, given the huge footballing and cultural differences between here and their home countries.

Pitching a 21-year-old who has never kicked a ball outside of Argentina into the grim slog of a Premier League relegation battle would be a bold move – especially when there is going to be so much pressure on his young shoulders to transform a side who are sleepwalking into the Championship at the minute.

We’ve seen with Aaron Connolly what can happen when you place too much faith in young talent to deliver. Potter’s phobia of using Glenn Murray means that we’ve become over reliant on the goals of Neal Maupay and the 20-year-old Irishman.

Connolly subsequently hasn’t scored since his full debut against Tottenham Hotspur in October. In recent weeks, he’s begun moping around the pitch like a stroppy teenager as things don’t go his way. He’s also deleted everything to do with the Albion from his Instagram account.

And this is a player who has grown up playing in England. If Connolly is understandably struggling to deliver in a relegation battle because of his youth and lack of experience, what chance does a player the same age who has never set foot in England before have?

Perhaps Mac Allister would therefore be better suited staying in Argentina for the rest of the season. He can have a relaxing summer and get six weeks of pre-season under his belt to adjust to life in England – much better preparation than being thrown in at the deep end with six pointers against West Ham United, Watford and Crystal Palace within a month of his arrival.

There is another solution which not many people seem to be talking about. The Albion could pay Boca their money and bring Alexis Mac Allister over now – but rather than pitch him into the senior setup, let him have six months in the Under 23s, train with the first team squad and if he looks up to it, make the odd substitutes appearance here and there.

We could slowly ease him into life in England over the course of the next six months with the aim of getting him in a position whereby he can hit the ground running come the start of the 2020-21 campaign.

That would of course require patience, something that seems to be in short supply among Brighton fans at the moment.

You can imagine the outcry if Potter and the Albion did bring Mac Allister over but then not play him. Albion supporters already have a longstanding traditions of elevating the ability levels of those who aren’t playing – Florin Andone, Jurgen Locadia and even play Beram Kayal currently – and that would be turbocharged with Mac Allister.

Whatever happens with Mac Allister, what we do know is that he alone won’t be enough to save our season. You cannot rely on a 21-year-old with no experience of European football to be the one to haul a struggling club out of the relegation zone.

Whether we see Mac Allister next month, next season or next year, Brighton still need to make further additions to the squad. The January transfer window shuts in two days. Two days to save our season.