Who’s Brighton’s most popular player on Twitter?

Want to know which Brighton and Hove Albion players have Twitter and which ones to follow? Then look no further than the definitive WeAreBrighton.com Twitter League Table, where we rank the Albion’s squad by followers, how many people they follow and how many Tweets they have sent.

Most followed Brighton players on Twitter
If you had to guess who the most followed Brighton player on Twitter was, who would you go for? Maty Ryan for being number one goalkeeper for the third biggest country in the world? Leon Balogun who comes from Nigeria, the sixth most populous nation on earth? Lewis Dunk, a full England international? Or Alireza Jahanbakhsh who seems to be figure of obsession for many Iranians?

We’re guessing that not many people would have picked Martin Montoya to be number one, but the £6m summer signing from Valencia has an astonishing 785,871 followers, over six times as many as Shane Duffy who sits second. Montoya’s popularity stems from his 45 games for Barcelona spread over the course of five season and just goes to show the social media power of playing for one of the biggest clubs on the planet, even if you’re just a back up right back.

That total makes Montoya the most followed Brighton player of all time, beating Ali al-Habsi who 453,748 when he arrived at the Amex in November 2014. No doubt his followers were glued to his every move at a Brighton shirt, which amounted to one game away at Bournemouth in which he picked the ball out of the net three times.

Duffy is the only other man to top six figures on 119,603 followers with Ryan third on 92,966. Balogun sits fourth on 88,773 while Ezquiel Schelotto rounds off the top five with 84,828, the Argentinian getting much more love from the Twitter community than Chris Hughton has shown him this season.

As for the other big names, Dunk’s account being private means that despite his recent ascension to international status he only has 9,892. Give his popularity over on Instagram, you could be forgiven for being surprise that Jahanbakhsh has only 10,710 but that is largely due to Iran being one of the four countries in the world which bans Twitter. The other three are North Korea, China, and Turkmenistan.

Most frequent Brighton tweeters
Brighton’s most frequent tweeter is by far and away Jose Izquierdo, who has racked up 14,865 posts in his eight years on the platform – and that is despite his most recent tweet coming as long ago as September. Duffy is second with 7,640 and is one of the few Albion players to tweet win, lose or draw. His refreshingly honest approach makes him what we imagine is a PR person’s worst nightmare as he sometimes veers wildly off script by posting his support of Martin McGuinness and the IRA or tweeting “Head’s gone” 24 hours before headbutting an opponent player 20 minutes into the biggest game of the season.

Schelotto is third on 7,552, Maty Ryan fourth on 3,729 and Beram Kayal fifth on 2,223. The Albion player who uses Twitter the least is unsurprisingly Jahanbakhsh given that nobody in his home country can actually read what he has to say. Brighton’s £17m record buy has tweeted only 14 times since joining in March 2017 with Davy Propper just ahead of him 18 tweets sent.

Brighton players who follow the most people on Twitter
Yves Bissouma is the Albion player who follows the most people, keeping tabs on 562 other users. Dunk watches the second-highest number on 496, which combined with the fact his profile is private suggests that he is one of the few players who is on Twitter for personal use rather than as a marketing tool.

Schelotto is again active in this category, following 441 while Solly Marc has 405 accounts on his follows list and Shane Duffy 394.

As well as the current squad, we’ve got a list of former Brighton players you can follow on Twitter – because who doesn’t want to know what Nathan Elder, Andy Ansah and David Lee are up to these days?

Don’t forget you can also follow WeAreBrighton on Twitter – @wearebrighton