Brighton – Europe’s 10th biggest net spenders on transfer fees since 2015

£229.45 million. That is Brighton and Hove Albion’s net spend on transfer fees since 2015. Two hundred and twenty nine million pounds. Just take a minute to read and consider that. It’s the 10th highest in Europe, no less.

Football 365 revealed the numbers in an article on their website last week – and it may go part of the way towards explaining why Tony Bloom has been so reluctant to dip into his wallet to fund more reinforcements in this January transfer window.

Only four English clubs have a higher net spend than the Albion in the past five years. Manchester City obviously top the list having spent £668.6 million on their continuing sportswashing project at the Etihad Stadium.

Crisis club Manchester United are second with £483.8 million, a figure which makes all their “we want our club back” social media posts and the flares thrown at Ed Woodward’s house seem extremely reasonable.

Arsenal have clocked up £292.64 million which leaves them seventh and Everton are in ninth with £250.5 million. The eye watering net spend on transfer fees racked up by Brighton is more than Chelsea (26th on the list), Liverpool (29th) and Tottenham Hotspur (32nd).

The other clubs in the top 10 are Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan, Barcelona, Inter Milan and Juventus. Juve’s net spend of £288.5 million is ‘only’ £60 million more than the Albion’s – and for that, the Old Lady have won four Serie A titles, three Copa Italias and reached two Champions League finals since 2015. We’ve lost 5-0 to Bournemouth and gone an entire calendar year only winning five games at home.

It doesn’t exactly make great reading for the Albion’s recruitment team that Bloom has sanctioned over £200 million worth of signings, and yet here we are fighting a third consecutive Premier League relegation battle.

While Brighton may have spent a huge amount on transfer fees, it’s actually the lack of sales that is responsible for placing the Albion so high up the list of Europe’s biggest net spenders.

The likes of Liverpool and Chelsea can reduce their net sales totals by flogging players such as Philippe Coutinho and Eden Hazard for £105 million and £85 million respective.

Compare that to Brighton. Since 2015, we’ve sold only two players for fees in excess of £2 million. One was Connor Goldson, who made the switch to Rangers in the summer of 2018 for £3.5 million.

The other was Alejs Mateju, the Czech Republic right back who was signed from Viktoria Plzen for £2.5 million in 2017 and then sold to Brescia for £4 million two years later – without ever playing a minute of league football for the Albion.

There are two ways to lack at the lack of sales. The first is that Bloom is clearly a chairman with the club’s best interests at heart.

He won’t sanction players leaving Brighton unless buying clubs are willing to part with astronomical transfer fees. That’s certainly been the case in the past. In 2015 for example, Bloom rejected both Fulham’s bids for Lewis Dunk and Dunk’s own transfer request as he tried to force through a move to Craven Cottage.

Five years on and Dunk remains Brighton’s best chance of reducing their net transfer spend through a sale. Leicester were linked heavily with a move for the Albion captain last summer, Chelsea were said to be interested in January and he’s certain to attract further attention next summer, especially if we end up going down.

In the current market, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect £40-50 million for Dunk, a figure which could suddenly reduce Brighton’s net transfer spend by nearly a quarter.

While Bloom’s refusal to sell is partly responsible for Brighton riding so high among Europe’s net spenders, the other reason that we haven’t seen many incoming transfer fees is because nobody wants to buy half the players we’ve signed.

The Albion would probably like to offload players like Jurgen Locadia, Florin Andone and Alireza Jahanbakhsh (before he scored two goals at least) but there simply aren’t any suitors willing to pay for them.

There’s more chance of a cure for coronavirus being found tomorrow than there is of Brighton recouping anywhere near the £14 million spent on Locadia.

The same goes for the £17 million on Jahanbakhsh and possibly even the £5 million on Florin Andone which, lest we forget, was nearly a fee of £15 million before Deportivo La Coruna were relegated from La Liga and Andone’s relegation clause kicked in.

Brighton’s net spend could be even higher had Dominic Solanke chosen to move to the Amex rather than Bournemouth last January. The Albion dodged a bullet there with the £20m that the Cherries paid Liverpool for Solanke’s services delivering a grand total of zero Premier League goals from 31 appearances to date.

After a net spend of £229.45 million on players in the past five years, could anyone blame Bloom for not wanting to throw more cash around, especially in the winter transfer window in which it is notoriously difficult to get value? Do you look at that figure and think it’s money well spent?

Brighton are the 10th biggest net spenders in Europe over the past five years because they’ve signed a glut of under performing players for high transfer fees, at the same time as having players who they’ve wanted to ship out with little to no resale value.

It’s a dangerous combination – and one that asks more serious questions about the work of the Albion’s recruitment team.