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

Want to know which Brighton players are on Twitter and which ones you should 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
You may remember when we last looked at the Twitter following of various Albion players back in February that we were bloody surprised to Martin Montoya leading the way – and by a considerable distance.

Well, nothing has changed there. Montoya still has over 600,000 more followers than Shane Duffy in second, a result of the Spaniard having played for three of the biggest clubs in Europe in Barcelona, Inter Milan and Valencia.

Montoya has seen his number of followers drop over the course of the past eight months though, down from 785,871 in February to 778,774 in November. Duffy meanwhile has increased his from 119,603 to 122,475, closing the gap at the top to trail by a number of people only twice the population of Brighton. Mad, isn’t it?

Behind the leading two, Leon Balogun has overtaken Maty Ryan to move into third. Balogun also hit the milestone of six figures with his following up from 92,966 to 107,282, an increase of nearly 15,000 despite now being the Albion’s fifth choice centre back. We’re guessing his increased popularity has something to do with Nigeria’s third placed finish at the summer’s African Cup of Nations.

Ryan now sits fourth on 93,775 with Ezequiel Schelotto rounding off the top five on 84,079. The big mover since February has been Aaron Connolly, who was being tracked by 2,921 followers back in February while on-loan at Luton Town.

Fast forward eight months and he’s scored twice on his full Premier League debut, established himself as a regular in Graham Potter’s starting line up, won two caps for the Republic of Ireland and gained 11,795 followers to rocket up the list from 22nd to 12th. Clearly, Connollymania shows no sign of abating.

Brighton’s most frequent tweeters
With 14,865 tweets to his name, Jose Izquierdo has posted nearly twice as much as his nearest rival who is Duffy on 7,721. What makes this even more staggering is that Izquierdo hasn’t actually posted anything since him and Ryan made a brief visit to their former club Club Brugge back in March.

The Colombian clearly has better things to be doing than sharing his thoughts with the world, such as trying to overcome a third knee procedure in the space of a year. Last time Potter spoke about Izquierdo, the Albion boss said that hoped to see him back in a Brighton shirt before the end of the season which doesn’t exactly sound promising. Fingers crossed for Izquierdo.

Schelotto is third having posted 7,638 times with Ryan the fourth most prolific on 3,826. Rounding off the top five most frequent tweeters is Gaetan Bong with 1,573.

New faces for Brighton fans to follow
Three of the Albion’s summer signings have Twitter with Adam Webster, Neal Maupay and Leandro Trossard all on the social networking site.

Maupay is the most popular of the trio with 18,106 followers. Webster has 14,122 while Trossard is miles back on 4,404 – although you suspect that if the Belgian winger keeps winning games single handedly for the Albion, that could all change very soon as bigger clubs begin to sit up and take notice.

Only one Albion player has less followers than Trossard and he is the fourth and final new addition to the chart – Steve Alzate.

Not many people would have even heard of Alzate when we last complied the list. He’d just returned from a pretty nondescript loan spell in League Two with Swindon Town, which explains why he is bottom of the pile on 2,342. With a full Colombian debut imminent, he could be about to rocket in popularity too.

One player has got rid of their Twitter account since February with Solly March deciding to sack it off. He was quite a prolific tweeter too, having racked up 1,109 posts in his time on the site.

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