Ben White signs new four year Brighton contract

Ben White will not be freed – the highly rated young defender has signed a new contract with Brighton & Hove Albion keeping him at the club until the summer of 2024.

Presumably, he must have penned the deal with Tony Bloom and Graham Potter holding a gun to his head. After all, those fans of The Leeds United who have spent the past six months telling us how White wouldforce through a move to the 1975 European Cup runners up cannot have possibly been wrong, could they?

It has taken a while to get to this point, of course. Leeds had three bids rejected for White, the largest of which totalled £25 million.

That Brighton turned down such a massive offer for a player who has never kicked a ball in the Premier League before tells you how highly he is rated at the Amex.

White himself rejected three contract offers from the Albion, which got Leeds fans giddy with excitement. It was fairly obvious that this was simply to try and maximise the amount of money he could get from a new contract rather than wanting to move to Elland Road, not that our deluded friends in the north realised.

In any case, Bloom held all the cards. White was a Brighton player for another three years anyway, leaving the Albion under no pressure to sell.

A transfer request or going on strike – as some Leeds fans demanded White do – would have only seen him banished to the sidelines at the Amex, hardly a good career move for a 22-year-old.

Instead, this new deal suits all parties. The Albion will get at least one season out of White in which he can develop as a top flight player.

They have also increased his value and their selling power should he impress in Brighton blue in 2020-21. Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur are all said to have been interested in White at one point or another.

If White turns out to be as good as we are told he is, then Brighton could find themselves with offers towards £50 million flying in next summer from the big six. Bloom really will have a dilemma then.

All this hype is based on White’s stellar season at Elland Road in 2019-20, winning Leeds’ Player of the Year award and helping to end the two-time Inter-Cities Fairs Cup winners’ 16 year absence from the top flight.

Leeds was the latest stopping post in a carefully thought through development plan from Brighton. White was first sent out to gain experience in League Two with Newport County in the 2017-18 season.

He spent part of 2018-19 with Peterborough United and then 2019-20 with Leeds, climbing through the divisions and learning the ropes as he went with the aim of pushing for a starting spot in the Albion’s first team.

This new contract shows that Ben White is very much a part of Brighton & Hove Albion’s plans going forward. The challenge now is for him to take the form he showed in the Championship into the Premier League.

There is of course a world of difference between the two divisions. White found that out in the Brighton’s 1-1 friendly draw with Chelsea on Saturday in which he looked a little shaky early on.

Dealing with forwards such as Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech is a world away from marking plodders from Barnsley and Luton Town. The Chelsea game served as a reminder that White will require the same levels of patience as any other young player stepping up from the league below, as we saw last season with Adam Webster who struggled initially before growing into a defender who looked like he belonged in the top flight by the end of campaign.

Securing White’s future comes just a couple of weeks after Brighton tied down captain Lewis Dunk to a new five-year deal. Dunk, White and Webster could be one of the best defences outside of the top six next season and all three are now on long term contracts.

This strength in depth at the back would also allow Shane Duffy to make a move with reports suggesting that confirmation of a season long loan deal with Celtic is imminent.

The best aspect of Ben White signing a new Brighton contract is that it will put to bed a transfer saga that has at times bordered on the ridiculous.

There were claims that Bloom and Brighton would have to sell White because Leeds are such a massive club and that Bielsa single handedly turned White from a player the Albion did not want into one who is now worth over £25 million – never mind that White’s pathway from League Two to League One to Championship had been carefully mapped out long before he moved to Elland Road.

The #FreeBenWhite hashtag was an embarrassment from Leeds fans, as were the banners outside the Amex. Brighton have trolled Leeds wonderfully with the decision to hand Ben White the number three squad number, #FreeBenWhite now becoming #3BenWhite.

How long he wears that shirt at Brighton for remains to be seen. If White has the season many are expecting, then it may not be long – bigger clubs will be circling and we can look forward to going through constant debates about his future all over again next summer.