Brighton & Hove Albion January 2022 Transfer Window Round Up
Who had the better January 2022 transfer window – Brighton or Royal Union Saint-Gilloise? That is the question many Albion fans were asking after the Seagulls two winter signings were loaned straight to Belgium to help Union in their quest for the Jupiler League title.
Striker Deniz Undav was signed from Union for £7 million but will remain there until the end of the season. Teenage Polish midfielder Kacper Kozlowski will join Undav in the land of mind-blowing 16 percent beer and fantastic cheese following his £8 million capture from Pogon Szczecin.
The pair – and maybe even Karou Mitouma if he qualifies for a British work permit – will then arrive in England in the summer, hopefully as Belgian champions.
Those two purchases were largely funded by the surprise sale of Dan Burn to Newcastle United for £13 million.
Although Burn had been in the best form of his Albion career, it was a deal too good for club or player to reject and the 6’7 Princess Diana look-a-like leaves the Amex with the blessing and best wishes of every Brighton fan.
There were other notable departures as Graham Potter continued the streamlining of this squad which we had seen in the summer. DJ Jurgen Locadia was released on a free to Bochum four years after Brighton had spent an astonishing £14 million on him.
Christian Walton’s eight years as a loan ranger came to an end with a permanent move to Ipswich Town and there were numerous loans out of the Albion, including for Aaron Connolly who is already making friends amongst the Middlesbrough fan base.
Brighton had to fend off plenty of interest from other Premier League clubs in the January 2022 transfer window for their star players. Before deciding to buy Burn, Newcastle were rumoured to be considering a bid for Adam Webster.
Yves Bissouma also attracted the interest of the Saudi Sportswashers and Aston Villa, Andy Naylor confirming in The Athletic that a £35 million offer for the Malian midfielder had been rejected midway through the window.
Although keeping Bissouma might be seen as a cause of celebration, he is now into the final 18 months of his contract and has shown no inclination to sign a new deal.
If any player was going to be sold in January, perhaps it should have been him. Brighton now have only the summer transfer window in which to try and extract a big fee for Bissouma before he can open talks with foreign clubs in January 2023 over a free transfer.
Leandro Trossard is in a similar boat, his contract also expiring in the summer of 2023. West Ham were weighing up a late January move for the winger and there will certainly be renewed interest in his services come the end of the season if Brighton cannot convince him to sign a new contract over the next six months.
For now then, this Albion squad pushing for European qualification remains intact – bar Burn. Here is your full round up of what Brighton did in the January 2022 transfer window.
Brighton and Hove Albion players in, January 2022:
Deniz Undav – Union Saint-Gilloise, £7 million
January 2022 transfer deadline day saw Brighton tie up a deal for Union Saint-Gilloise striker Deniz Undav, Bloom agreeing to move £7 million from one his clubs to the other for the services of the German centre forward.
It will be another six months before we see Undav in blue and white. With Union leading the Jupiler League in their first season back in Belgium’s top flight for nearly half a century, Bloom has decided to keep Undav in Brussels to give them the best chance of winning a most unlikely of titles.
A move to the Premier League completes a fairy tale rise for Undav, who has playing in Germany’s regionalised fourth tier as recently as the 2018.
52 goals in four seasons with TSV Havelse and SV Meppen – including firing Meppen to the Regionalliga Nord title in 2017-18 – were enough to convince Union to give Undav a chance in Belgium’s second tier, signing him on a free transfer in the summer of 2020.
There has been no looking back since. Undav scored 17 goals and claimed six assists to help Union win promotion to the Jupiler League in 2020-21.
He has 18 goals and another 13 assists from only 25 league appearances in the current campaign. His overall record with Union is 37 goals and 15 assists from 56 games in all competitions and that feeds into a career record of 181 matches, 100 goals and 47 assists.
The lovely Rachel Riley would be able to tell you very quickly that Undav averages better than a goal every two games.
He is a clinical striker who has coped with every step up in class so far in his career, from German village football to leading the Belgian top flight.
Make no mistake about it, proving himself good enough for the Premier League will be the toughest test of his career.
Percy Tau was a Jupiler League winner and yet failed to make the grade in England, showing just how difficult it is. Only time will tell if Undav can do what Tau could not.
The theory goes that if you put somebody with natural finishing ability into this Albion side who create so many chances, then they should get a hatful of goals. We will find out next August whether it is true or not.
Kacper Kozlowski – Pogon Szczecin, £8 million
Brighton pulled off quite the coup in capturing Poland international midfielder Kacper Kozlowski for a fee of £8 million from Pogon Szczecin… and then loaned him straight to Union.
Kozlowski is viewed as one of the hottest young properties in European football. AC Milan, Bayer Leverkusen, Manchester United and Liverpool were all rumoured to be keeping an eye on him with Jurgen Klopp said to be preparing a £10 million bid until the Seagulls swooped.
The 2020-21 season saw Kozlowski come to prominence. He made 20 appearances mainly as an orthodox central midfielder and scored once, helping his boyhood club to third place in the Polish top flight, their highest finish for 20 years.
That was enough for Kozlowski to force his way into Poland’s squad for Euro 2020 (in 2021). He made history at the tournament, becoming the youngest ever player to play in a European Championship aged 17 years and 246 days.
Kozlowski brings the versatility that Graham Potter so treasures in his players. He can play in a traditional midfield role, as an attacking midfielder and a false nine. The closest match to him currently at the Albion is probably Alexis Mac Allister.
And whilst there is a lot of to be excited about by the capture of Kozlowski, like Undav there are no guarantees that he be successfully make the jump from an inferior European top division to the Premier League.
Just ask Michal Karbownik. He too was a Polish international who was on the wanted list of some of Europe’s biggest clubs when Brighton brought him to England for £4.5 million from Legia Warsaw last January.
One FA Cup and one League Cup appearance later and he was loaned to Olympiacos, who are believed to have a right-to-buy clause come the end of the season.
Kozlowski will hope to make more an impression when he arrives at the Amex next summer. Even if the inevitable happens and Yves Bissouma is sold, competition is still fierce for a spot in the Albion’s midfield. How and where Kozlowski fits in will be interesting to see.
Brighton and Hove Albion players out, January 2022:
Dan Burn – Newcastle United, £13 million
One of the more unexpected January 2022 transfer window moves saw the richest club in the world pay £13 million to Brighton for Big Dan Burn.
Saudi riches were meant to bring in the likes of Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé, yet here they were signing a 6’7 bloke from Blyth.
In fairness to the Sportswashers, signing Burn was surprisingly sensible and a transfer that made sense for all parties.
The Albion pocketed a cool £13 million for a 29-year-old out of contract in 18 months time, who was arguably fifth choice centre back and third choice left wing back when Brighton are not ravaged by injuries.
Burn secured a dream move to the club he supported as a boy, doubling his wages at the same time with probably the last big deal of his career.
And Newcastle pick up a proven Premier League performer who never gives less than 110 percent. Burn is exactly the sort of character you need in a relegation battle.
The fee received for Burn went a long way towards paying for the signings of Undav and Kozlowski. That is good business from a Brighton point-of-view, even if there are some justifiable concerns about how the Albion will cope without the cover provided by Burn’s versatility.
DJ Jurgen Locadia – Vfl Bochum, free transfer
Do not cry because it is over… smile because it happened. DJ, Instagram influencer, fashion icon and part-time footballer Jurgen Locadia ended his four year spell with Brighton by moving to Bundesliga side Bochum on a free transfer.
The Albion may not have got their moneys worth in terms of goals or footballing ability from a player who they paid £14 million for and put on a £40,000 per week contract, but Locadia enriched the lives of Seagulls supporters in many other ways.
From the two music albums he dropped to launching his own fashion brand to thought-provoking Instagram posts of him having his haircut or staring pensively into a fridge with the caption, “We are writers, my love. We don’t cry, we bleed on paper”, DJ Jurgen was so much more than a mere footballer.
Christian Walton – Ipswich Town, undisclosed
January 2022 was the transfer window when we said a permanent goodbye to Christian Walton, who had been the third longest serving player at Brighton after Lewis Dunk and Solly March.
Walton made his Brighton debut under Sami Hyypia in 2014, since when he has lived a nomadic life playing for eight different clubs on loan.
Ipswich Town were the most recent of those and they have paid what is being reported as a “small fee” to become Walton’s full-time employer.
Walton will remain one of Brighton’s biggest “what ifs”. Graham Potter was set to give him a deserved chance to challenge Maty Ryan for the number one shirt ahead of the 2020-21 season.
Unfortunately for Walton, he broke his leg during a pre-season friendly with Chelsea. When Ryan’s form deserted him three months later, it was Robert Sanchez who benefited to become Brighton number one whilst Walton remained sidelined.
In a parallel universe somewhere, Walton never gets injured and succeeds Ryan as the Albion’s first choice goalkeeper rather than finding himself in League One. Football can be a cruel sport.
Ryan Longman – Hull City, £700,000
When you are a Brighton fan who grew up with the club produced academy strikers like Shaun Wilkinson and Daniel Marney, it remains astounding that the Albion are now in a position to sell a centre forward who graduated from the youth team for £700,000 without them ever playing a senior league game.
That is the fee that the Seagulls attracted for Ryan Longman as Hull City turned his loan at the KC and the Sunshine Band Stadium into a permanent deal.
The 21-year-old has scored four goals in 20 games for the Championship Tigers, having hit nine on loan with League One AFC Wimbledon last season.
We will be keeping an eye on how he gets on in the second tier over the rest of the campaign, compared to the next man on our list…
Aaron Connolly – Middlesbrough, loan
Aaron Connolly was involved in more stories in gossip pages of the newspapers in 2021 – breaking lockdown to bonk a woman, driving offences, his on-off relationship with Lucinda from Love Island – than he managed Premier League goals.
It has been apparent for sometime now that what he needs is a loan spell in the Championship. He could rediscover some form and hopefully grow up a bit playing in the no-nonsense, rough-and-tumble second tier of English football.
Potter belatedly agreed with that assessment and so Brighton have loaned Connolly to Middlesbrough in the January 2022 transfer window.
Working for a manager like Chris Wilder who will not take any shit can iron Connolly out and help him prove he has a future in the Premier League.
We will not say too much on how his first month at the Riverside Stadium has gone, other than the highlight has been Connolly getting a huge tattoo of himself on his own arm.
If you want to know anymore, a quick search on Twitter for “Connolly Middlesbrough” should suffice. It makes for rather entertaining reading.
Kjell Scherpen – Oostende, loan
After one Brighton appearance in the 3-1 FA Cup third round win at West Brom following his £5 million summer arrival from Ajax, giant Dutch goalkeeper Kjell Scherpen has joined Belgian second tier outfit Oostende on loan.
At the age of 22, Scherpen needs to be playing first team football to aid his development rather than sitting in the stands as the Albion’s third choice. A good move for all parties.
Taylor Richards – Birmingham City, loan
There had been hopes that Taylor Richards might break into the Albion first team this season after scoring double figures from midfield in League One with Doncaster Rovers last season.
The array of options available to Potter in that particular positions has seen Richards restricted to a couple of Carabao Cup starts and two brief appearances off the bench in the Premier League.
He now spends the remainder of the campaign with Birmingham City, hoping to take the form he showed at Doncaster into the Championship with him whilst picking up further first team experience.
Leo Ostigard – Genoa, loan
A combination of a stellar loan spell with Coventry City in 2020-21, some impressive pre-season performances and the sale of Ben White to Arsenal for £50 million left many Brighton fans expecting Leo Ostigard to challenge for a Premier League spot this season.
It came as something of a surprise then when he was loaned to Stoke City. Even more of a shock is that his switch to the Potteries did not work out, partly due to injuries but seemingly because he also failed to impress Michael O’Neill sufficiently.
Ostigard subsequently had his season long loan at the Bet365 Stadium terminated early. He has since moved to Serie A side Genoa, giving him the chance to experience football in a top European division for the first time.
Strong performances in Italy of the sort that saw him score in a Coppa Italia defeat to AC Milan in his second game at Genoa could yet help him have a career with the Albion, especially in light of the Burn sale and the interest Webster is sure to attract if he receives an England call up.
Brighton & Hove Albion January 2022 transfer window scorecard
Positives:
- Adam Webster remains a Brighton player. Yves Bissouma and Leandro Trossard are also still at the Albion, although their contract situations are a concern
- Brighton have signed a centre forward who looks to be a clinical finisher with a good goals-to-game ratio
- Dan Burn becoming the third most expensive sale in Brighton history at £13 million is a good bit of business
- Kacper Kozlowski is another exciting young talent with the potential to become a star
Negatives:
- With Burn sold and no immediate new signings, the squad is weaker than it was at the beginning of January
- Are Brighton now a little short in the centre back areas, considering Potter’s liking for a back three and the injury problems suffered by Dunk and Webster this season?
- No more DJ Jurgen. Don’t you dare try and say that is a positive
