Brighton & Hove Albion Summer 2022 Transfer Window Round Up
How successfully you view Brighton & Hove Albion’s summer 2022 transfer window probably comes down to what you consider most important for the progression and long-term stability of the football club.
Put on a financial hat and it has been an outstanding few months. The Albion have raised close to £125 million in player sales.
On the balance sheet, that wipes out the £53.4 million losses recorded in the last set of published accounts for the 2020-21 season.
It is still a long way short of the £427 million that Tony Bloom is technically owed by the club, having invested vast swathes of his own personal fortune over the past 13 years.
The numbers though surely mean that for the first time as a Premier League club, Brighton will not see a massive number in the red on their balance sheet. However great Bloom is, the Albion should not be relying on his money along to survive.
Put on a football hat and the summer 2022 transfer window looks nowhere near as rosy for Brighton. The sales of Marc Cucurella, Yves Bissouma and Neal Maupay have undoubtedly left the squad looking weaker than it was when the 2021-22 season was concluded.
The issue is particularly acute in the forward line. Maupay’s departure means the Albion are relying on Danny Welbeck as their only striker with any sort of Premier League track record or experience. An injury to Dat Guy and Brighton might be up a rather famous brown creek without a wooden steering instrument.
Five players have come in for a total of around £37 million. Of the new faces, Julio Enciso is the only forward available to Graham Potter for the first half of the campaign. Enciso is yet to play a minute of Premier League football.
Deniz Undav and Kaoru Mitoma have both arrived from Union Saint-Gilloise, but they were signed in the January 2022 and summer 2021 transfer windows respectively before being loaned back to Brussels.
Mitoma has looked decent in a couple of cameos down the left. He is not a striker though. Undav is, but Potter leaving him on the bench when Welbeck was rested for the trip to Fulham suggests the Albion boss does not think last season’s Jupiler League top scorer is ready for English football yet.
The majority of the work done by Brighton in the summer 2022 transfer window has come in loaning players out for various reasons.
Steve Alzate, Andi Zeqiri, Taylor Richards, Reda Khadra, Haydon Roberts, Kjell Scherpen, Michal Karbownik, Shane Duffy, Aaron Connolly, Abdallah Sima and Kacper Kozlowski are amongst those who will spend the season elsewhere.
Time will tell whether Brighton have got their summer 2022 transfer window right. Much will surely depend on keeping Welbeck fit.
If Dat Guy were to be ruled out for a prolonged period, then it would overshadow the huge profit made and the shrewd additions purchased like Pervis Estupinan and Billy Gilmour for fees which could turn out to be bargains.
The Albion have taken a big gamble. History shows that Bloom normally gets these things right. Let us hope he has on this occasion.
Brighton and Hove Albion players in, summer 2022:
Pervis Estupinan – Villarreal, £15 million
Brighton did not hang around when it came to signing a Marc Cucurella replacement. Within a couple of weeks, £15 million of the £62 million received for the wild-haired Spaniard had been spent on another swashbuckling left back capable of providing fireworks up and down the flank.
The Albion had a long-standing interest in Estupinan going back to when he was a Watford player in 2020. He instead moved to the Yellow Submarine, where he has excelled over the past two seasons to attract the attentions of Spurs and Manchester United.
No Villarreal player completed more crosses in 2021-22 than Estupinan. He played a huge part in Unai Emery’s side reaching the semi finals of the Champions League and will expect to play a starring role for Ecuador in the winter World Cup.
Based on what we have seen from Estupinan so far, things are not likely to be dull with him in the team. At Fulham, he gave away a goal at one end and won a penalty at the other.
Against The Leeds United, he was excellent until the final 30 minutes when he tired, started setting up visiting players and had to be substituted. At West Ham, he would have had an assist with an excellent cross if Solly March could finish.
Cucurella barely put a foot wrong at the back. That is the noticeable difference between last season’s left back and this season. If Potter can improve Estupinan defensively and combine that with the natural attacking flair displayed so far, then the Albion look to have quite the addition.
Julio Enciso – Libertad Asuncion, £10 million
A piece of Brighton transfer history was made in the summer of 2022 when a new signing was revealed on the Paraguayan version of Loose Women.
18-year-old Enciso was interviewed live from Brighton Marina by the panel of the mid-morning gossip show. Enciso had an Albion shirt laid on the table in front of him and talked about achieving his dream of moving to England, all before the club had the chance to officially announce the capture of the South American wonderkid.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the Amex when they realised their tight control over what the media do and don’t report is not as tight as they would like.
There are other reasons to be excited about Enciso aside from his friendship with his native country’s Alison Hammond and Ruth Langsford.
For £10 million, Brighton have signed themselves one of the most exciting prospects in South America. Enciso can play as a second striker, a number 10, out on the right or as a false nine.
Like Mitoma, he wants to get on the ball, run at opponents and make things happen. Brighton do not possess many players with those attributes, which is what has got fans so excited.
Enciso scored 21 goals in 68 appearances for Libertad, an impressive record for a teenager. He made his professional debut at just 15, was a full Paraguay international by 18 and has been predicted to have the same sort of impact at Brighton as Moises Caicedo.
Caicedo provides an interesting comparison. It was 18 months and one loan spell between his arrival at Brighton and his Premier League debut.
Potter appears to be taking the same patient approach with Enciso, who is yet to play a minute of league football so far for the Albion.
We might have to wait a while to see Enciso make an impact in the Premier League. An early hunch is that it will be worth it.
Billy Gilmour – Chelsea, £9 million
In March 2020, Gilmour was one of the hottest properties in British football. He had just broken into the Chelsea first team as an 18-year-old, earning rave reviews for his midfield performance which helped the Blues knock Liverpool out of the FA Cup.
Then the first lockdown arrived. When football returned in June, Gilmour was soon ruled out for six months with a knee injury.
His biggest supporter Frank Lampard was sacked, Thomas Tuchel never took to him and he endured a disappointing season on loan at Norwich, becoming the scapegoat as the Canaries finished rock bottom of the Premier League.
There can be no question that Gilmour’s career has stalled over the past two years. Which makes him such an intriguing signing for Brighton, working under a coach like Potter with a proven track record of improving and coaxing the best out of young players.
If Potter can help get Gilmour back on track and realise the potential that marked him out as a future superstar at Stamford Bridge, then signing him for £9 million could prove to be the best bit of business any club has done in the summer 2022 transfer window – not just Brighton.
Levi Colwill – Chelsea, loan
Brighton & Hove Albion do not do loans. Or so we thought. As part of the Cucurella to Chelsea deal, not only did the Albion bring their first senior player in on loan since Aaron Mooy in 2019, but they also signed a bloke named after a set of jeans for the first time in the club’s history.
Defender Levi Colwill is considered one of the 50 best young players in world football. He helped Huddersfield Town to the Championship playoff final during an excellent 2021-22 season spent at whatever the John Smith’s Stadium is called now, breaking into the England Under 21 squad at the same time.
Having proven himself in the second tier, Colwill now comes to the Amex looking to gain Premier League experience. Joel Veltman, Lewis Dunk and Adam Webster are very much established as the Albion’s back three. Colwill – alongside Jan Paul van Hecke – will provide decent back up.
Simon Adringa – Nordsjaelland, £6 million
It would not be a summer transfer window without Brighton signing a young striker and then immediately loaning him out – and in 2022 that role fell to Simon Adringa.
The 20-year-old Ivorian cost £6 million from Danish side Nordsjaelland. He will spend the 2022-23 season with Union SG, replacing Mitoma in the Belgian side’s squad.
A forward capable of playing down either flank, Adringa’s highlight reel on YouTube (insert normal disclaimer about how Cristian Baz and Augustin Batipiedi looked good on YouTube here) shows a quick, direct player who likes to run at people and burst inside from out wide.
Adringa scored 10 times and assisted four goals from 33 appearances in 2021-22, despite playing in a team who struggled to a ninth placed finish in Denmark’s Superliga.
Union playing Europa League football this season will give Adringa a chance to test himself against better opponents. Should he take it, then he could become a part of Graham Potter’s squad for 2023-24. If he doesn’t, Stoke City will have themselves a new winger instead.
Brighton and Hove Albion players out, summer 2022:
Marc Cucurella – Chelsea, £62 million
The transfer saga of the summer went just about as well as could be hoped for Brighton. They extracted a world record fee for a full back of £62 million from Chelsea.
Manchester City were shown that they cannot always bully clubs into selling players below their true worth, just because the Citizens are owned by a rich sheikh. Fabrizio Romano and loads of other “in the know” Twitter accounts were made to look very silly.
And Cucurella has since gone completely mad with hugely entertaining results. He has spoken in interviews about how he used to drive past Stamford Bridge whilst dreaming of playing there and claiming that he used to take every free kick for Brighton.
It would have been nice to enjoy Cucurella for more than one year and to see how he progressed at the Amex after winning Supporters’ Player and Players’ Player of the Season.
Sometimes though, somebody offers an amount of cold, hard cash that is too much to turn down. Cheers, Chelsea.
Yves Bissouma – Spurs, £25 million
Bissouma was always going to leave this summer. The question was merely where and for how much. To gain £25 million was a good outcome in the end for a player whose contract was in the final 12 months and who could have talked to clubs in Europe as soon as January about a free transfer.
That Spurs were the only interested party was something of a surprise. Bissouma would improve the midfield of any team in the Premier League, and yet there was no bidding war. Just Antonio Conte wanting to take Bissouma to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Losing a player of Bissouma’s quality is never easy. The blow has at least been softened by the emergence of Moises Caicedo (whisper it quietly, but he has the potential to be better than Bissouma) and the reinvention of Alexis Mac Allister as a more defensive midfielder.
Every Brighton supporter will wish Bissouma the best at Spurs. It is the next stage on his journey towards becoming a world class defensive midfielder, having served the Albion brilliantly over four seasons.
Neal Maupay – Everton, £15 million
As already noted, the jury remains very much out on whether selling Maupay to Everton was a sensible move or a gamble too far.
On the one hand, the Albion were presented with a final opportunity to pick up some sort of fee before the summer of 2023 arrived and Maupay could walk on a free.
On the other, Brighton have sold their top scorer from the past three seasons. The Albion are now a Welbeck injury away from having to negotiate a chunk of the season with only Undav and Evan Ferguson as recognised centre forwards.
Neither has any experience in English football or at a level remotely close to the quality of the Premier League. A goal shy team with such a lack of depth in the striking department could be a recipe for disaster.
Oh, and you can guarantee that Maupay will score against Brighton for Everton. The only question is will he be a complete shithouse and celebrate with the intention of causing maximum meltdown amongst Brighton supporters?
Part of me hopes he does. There is only one Petite Shithouse Française.
Leo Ostigard – Napoli, £10 million
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new poster boy for the Brighton approach. Buy young players from across Europe. Develop them into top talents via loan spells. Sell them on for a profit if there is no place for them at the Albion.
Ostigard never played a league game for the Albion. That did not stop Napoli for paying a fee rising to a potential £10 million, offering Ostigard the chance to live in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius and play Champions League football.
Many Brighton fans were baffled that Ostigard never got a chance at the Amex. The writing was on the wall though when Potter preferred Duffy over the Norwegian international last summer, opting to send Ostigard to Stoke despite him having proved himself at Championship level at Coventry City.
Where Ostigard goes from here will be fascinating. If he excels in Serie A and in European competition, might he return to England one day with another Premier League outfit? Will Brighton come to regret never giving him an opportunity? Watch this space.
Matt Clarke – Middlesbrough, £3.5 million
If a tree falls in the forest with no ears to hear, does it make a sound? If Matt Clarke spent three years with Brighton but never played a first team game, did he really exist?
Defender Clarke became the first signing of the Potter era when purchased from Portsmouth for £3.5 million in the summer of 2019.
He spent the 2019-20 on loan at Derby County. He spent the 2020-21 season on loan at Derby County. He spent the 2021-22 season on loan at West Bromwich Albion.
And now he moves to Middlesbrough for £3.5 million, the exact same amount the Albion paid for him. Some fans have described the whole exercise as pointless, but not every deal will turn a profit like Ostigard.
Florin Andone – Las Palmas, free transfer
Brighton have been trying to get Andone out of the exit door and his rumoured £40,000 a week pay packet off the wage bill across six transfer windows.
They finally managed it at the seventh attempt by terminating his contract. A few hours later and La Liga 2 side Las Palmas snapped him up on a free transfer. Good luck.
Andone missed more games through suspension (six) than he managed Premier League goals (four). He was so unpopular with his teammates that journalist Paul Hayward infamously tweeted that Andone’s leaving party could have been held in a phone box.
Within weeks of joining Galatasaray on loan at the end of the summer 2019 transfer window, he told The Athletic he never wanted to return to Brighton.
According to the gospel of Andone, he should have been playing instead of top scorer Glenn Murray and that it was Chris Hughton and Graham Potter’s fault he was not a success in the Premier League.
Andone will always have that goal in the 3-1 win over Crystal Palace with 10 men for Brighton fans to remember him by. Other than that, his signing has been a total waste of time.
And the scariest thing of all? Brighton nearly signed Andone for £14.8 million a year before they were able to activate his Deportivo La Coruna relegation release clause to pick him up for £5.2 million.
Depor rejecting the Albion’s mega-money bid helped the Seagulls dodge a massive financial bullet.
Tudor Baluta – FCV Farul, free transfer
Tudor Baluta was a full Romanian international when he arrived at the Amex for £2.7 million in January 2019 from Viitorul Constanta.
Six months later and he was one of the stars of the European Under 21 Championships, helping his nation to the semi finals of the competition.
Much was expected of a young player dubbed the future of Romanian football. He never made a Premier League appearance and endured an injury-hit loan spell at Dynamo Kyiv last season.
Baluta has since returned to his homeland with FCV Farul. Hopefully, he can rebuild his career as he seemed like a thoroughly nice chap.
Brighton & Hove Albion summer 2022 transfer window scorecard
Positives:
- Money, money, money. £125 million raised in player sales looks good on the balance sheet and can be reinvested in future windows
- Brighton have only lost two first choice players – Cucurella and Bissouma. They held onto Moises Caicedo, Adam Webster, Leandro Trossard, Joel Veltman and Robert Sanchez
- Signing Enciso and Gilmour for a combined £19 million gives two players with serious potential and resale value for Potter to improve
- The profit made on Ostigard proves that the Brighton model works and can turn a profit
Negatives:
- On paper, the squad looks weaker than it did when the 2021-22 season finished
- In the striker department, Brighton have taken a huge gamble on Welbeck remaining fit and Undav making the step up
