Brighton look to premium sales as Palace approaches

All Brighton and Hove Albion fans wondered what the future might hold in store for us as Roberto De Zerbi moved on and the club announced that we would replace him with basically unknown FC St. Pauli gaffer Fabian Hurzeler.

The decision from our Board was even more left field given the now 32 year old former defensive midfielder became the youngest ever manager in Premier League history in the process, and whilst the deals and decisions that we have made as we have grown through the English pyramid to establish ourselves as top flight regulars cannot be doubted, many wondered if we had bit off more than we could chew with this choice.

Our United States born, German youth international head coach, has not had everything go his way in his maiden 2024/25 campaign, but the Seagulls are flying high in seventh place this year and we are only one point off Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City who occupy fifth place and the final European spot With a European adventure potentially back on the cards, all eyes are now on Brighton odds for their game vs Palace this weekend – Crystal Palace – 6/4 – Draw – 12/5 – Brighton – 17/10 – *Odds subject to change – and given the relative form of both sides right now, Hurzeler would be confident of coming out with all three points and a positive result.

Eight points separate us in the table going into Saturday’s clash and even though there are plenty of games left to play this year, as is typical for the way that we are run, we are already looking ahead to the summer and the opening of the transfer window and not only have we just announced the pre-capture of Sunderland’s 18 year old winger Tom Watson for a fee of £10 million, we are reportedly already looking to head off interest in star duo Joao Pedro and Carlos Baleba by slapping a £100 million price tag on both their heads.

Everyone knows how the speculation rumour mill works with the press, but one of Brighton’s major successes in the last few years has been in identifying talent that would develop and grow for a fair price, before then selling them on for a very good price that has allowed us to reinvest in our own first team squad so we could continue pushing ourselves up the table.

Fans would immediately think of the Moises Caicedo deal, Marc Cucurella and Alexis Mac Allister to name just three from the last couple of seasons and interestingly we have done very well out of Chelsea in particular.

With Pedro being linked with Arne Slot’s Liverpool side ahead of what will prove to be a summer rebuild for them given the talent that finds itself out of contract at the end of the campaign, and Baleba being predictably linked with the aforementioned Chelsea including a number of other top clubs, drawing our line now will play to our advantage again whatever ultimately happens.

And thanks to the Caicedo sale, one huge advantage we have this summer is that there is no financial pressure to sell whatsoever, so if we do allow either to move on then it will be for a Caicedo premium.

We will see what happens, for now it is all eyes to unexpected rivals Palace and hopefully another three points at Selhurst Park.