Brighton sign £7m striker Abdallah Sima – and loan him straight to Stoke
There is no shame in saying that Brighton signing striker Abdallah Sima from Slavia Prague for £7 million and then loaning him immediately to Stoke City is straight in at number one on the WAB list of greatest Albion deadline day moments.
Here we are with hours of the summer transfer window left and the club have finally purchased a reinforcement in the one area in which we look desperately short. And then they send him straight to the Championship.
The reaction on social media has been priceless. One fan said that they would chop their arm off live on Periscope if Brighton bought Abdallah Sima and then let him join Stoke. Looking forward to watching that whilst tucking into fish and chips for dinner later.
Together BHA podcast tweeted that they will lose their fucking minds if we do not not sign another striker before the 11pm deadline.
Others have gone apoplectic with rage at Dan Ashworth, Graham Potter and the recruitment team with one particularly irate individual saying we deserve to go down. Give the BHAFC hashtag a browse on Twitter if you fancy a laugh.
The person we should probably feel sorry for in all this is Sima himself. Imagine swapping living in Prague for what is effectively a year of work experience in Stoke-on-Trent?
From the Charles Bridge and beautiful pints of Staropramen to junction 15 of the M6 and bottles of Fosters in a nightclub called Gossip!. Poor bloke.
According to Ashworth, the reason that Sima has been banished to the Potteries is because he has enjoyed a rapid rise and is still developing. Never has the adage of “Can he do it on a wet and windy Tuesday night in Stoke?” been more relevant.
Sina was spotted by French fifth tier club Thonon Evian whilst playing for an amateur team in his native Senegal called Medina. Evian brought Sina to Europe before he moved to the Czech Republic in early 2020, joining third division side MAS Táborsko.
He came to the attentions of Slavia Prague last summer after scoring twice for Táborsko against Slavia’s reserves in a pre-season friendly.
Slavia subsequently made their move with the intention of using Sina in their B Team for 2020-21. The striker though made such an impression upon arrival that he was fast tracked straight into the senior setup.
Sima ended the season with 16 goals from 33 appearances, helping Slavia to their seventh Czech title. Four of those goals came from 11 Europa League appearances as the Sešívaní – which wonderfully translates to the Stitched – made it as far as the quarter finals of the competition.
The appeal of Abdallah Sima to Brighton is obvious. At 20-years-old, he perfectly fits the type of signing the Albion like to make of a relatively low-cost import from Europe with the scope to improve and strong resale value.
Sima can play anywhere across the front three, providing the sort of versatility that Potter cherishes. And at 6’2, he will offer a different threat to opponents from that posed by the hobbit-like Neal Maupay and Aaron Connolly, presuming of course we get to see Sima in a Brighton shirt.
The £7 million fee is more than Brighton would normally pay for a young up-and-coming player, so clearly the club rate him highly. If he fires Stoke to promotion this season, then it will look like an absolute bargain.
Whilst Sima is in the Potters, it appears that the Albion will try and negotiate their way until January at least with only three senior strikers, unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat in the final few hours of the transfer window.
Of those, Connolly has appeared in more stories on the gossip pages of newspapers in the past year than he has scored Premier League goals.
Danny Welbeck is quality but has a body which is held together by a combination of WD40 and Sellotape. Neal Maupay has looked in good nick so far this season but the feeling remains that he is better suited to playing as a second striker rather being the main man leading the line – a role he will have to fulfil out of necessity without a new face coming in.
It seems incredible that the club have known for two years and three transfer windows now that a new striker is needed if Brighton are to start doing more than battling relegation every year.
And yet here we are with an arguably weaker front line than we started the summer with. Percy Tau has been sold and another promising young forward in Andi Zeqiri has gone on loan to Augsburg.
An injury or suspension to Maupay whilst Welbeck is taking one of his soirées in the treatment room will leave Potter with very few options up front.
Brighton have managed to get away with having only three strikers before – the 2019-20 season was played out with Maupay, Connolly and Glenn Murray – but there will surely come a time when fate conspires to rule the few centre forwards on the books out at the same time.
The Albion will not be able to play Sima at all this season, either. Having already played six competitive games for Slavia in 2021-22 without scoring, once Sima turns out for Stoke then he will have made appearances for two different professional clubs which is the maximum allowed in a single campaign under FIFA rules.
We will therefore have to watch with interest how he gets on in the Potteries – after watching a Brighton fan attempt to chop his own arm off, of course.
