Brighton turn Aaron Mooy loan permanent with a £5m fee to Huddersfield

Someone call David Dickinson, the Albion have got themselves a bargain. For a rumoured fee of just £5m, Brighton have turned the loan of Aaron Mooy from Huddersfield Town into a permanent deal.

Mooy has signed a three-and-a-half year contract, tying him to the Albion until the summer of 2024. It’s a move that many Seagulls fans had been begging the club to make after a string of superlative performances from the Australian playmaker in his five months at the Amex so far.

More than a few eyebrows were raised when Graham Potter made Mooy his fifth and final summer signing on transfer deadline day. Why did we need to sign another number 10 – one who’d just been relegated out of the Premier League – when there were more pressing positions to fill such as at right back, out wide and up top?

At the time, Huddersfield fans were devastated at losing their best ever player Aaron Mooy; plenty of Brighton fans just laughed and said he probably wouldn’t even get in our starting XI.

Oh, how wrong we were. When Mooy has been on form, he’s been unplayable this season. Tottenham Hotspur, Arsenal and Bournemouth have all found that out.

Mooy has topped our Player Ratings on more occasions than any other individual so far, took top spot in the December WAB Power Rankings and won the Player of the Month vote for good measure.

All of that led to an increasing sense of panic as the Albion told fans they had no plans to turn Mooy’s loan move permanent and were ‘relaxed’ about the entire situation – despite the fact that performances of the quality that he had been delivering would surely attract the attention of bigger suitors.

We’ve been here before of course. Brighton decided to try and pay the lowest fee possible for Stephen Ward in the summer of 2014 after a spellbinding season on loan at the Amex from Wolverhampton Wanderers.

They refused to meet Wolves’ asking price, preferring instead to wait until the end of the transfer window when they hoped that the price would drop. Burnley duly nipped in with an offer, Brighton panicked and finally matched it.

The Albion’s dallying proved fatal however as the lure of Premier League football with the Clarets proved greater than signing for a club who wanted to haggle over a couple of quid to secure his signature.

Thankfully, there’ll be no repeat of that debacle now. Why Brighton were so relaxed this time around remains unclear, although the suspicion is there was a cast-iron clause in the loan agreement with Huddersfield which gave us first refusal on Aaron Mooy.

If such a clause existed and Brighton could have signed him in the summer without anyone else getting in the way, then the timing of the deal is interesting.

The comments from inside the club as recently as a couple of weeks ago were very much that Mooy’s future wouldn’t be sorted until the end of the season.

What’s changed since then? A cynic might suggest that the Albion were desperate to find some positive PR after a week in which they suffered a severe backlash for picking up just one point from games against Aston Villa and Bournemouth.

There has also been very vocal criticism of the decision to award Potter a new five-and-a-half deal after winning just four Premier League games in his life. Since signing his improved contract, we’ve won just two more.

Whatever the reasons behind the change of heart, there’s no doubting that Aaron Mooy making a permanent switch to Brighton from Huddersfield is excellent news.

Ultimately, the fee will be higher than £5m as the Albion would have had to pay a significant loan fee to secure Mooy for the season.

For some context, Fulham paid £4m to loan Anthony Knockaert while Boca Juniors forked out £2m for Alexis Mac Allister – a fact that is perhaps complicating whether Brighton recall Mac Allister now he has a British Work Permit.

But even if we’ve paid something like a £5m loan fee and another £5m on top, picking up a proven Premier League player who is at the height of his powers for £10m represents an astonishingly good bit of business.

Hopefully, it will be the first of several deals over the next week for the Albion. Further reinforcements are desperately needed for the men’s squad – the women’s in contrast seem to have signed about 20 new players.

All of these have been announced as “Breaking transfer news” on Twitter to increasingly angry replies from infuriated fans, who thought that the French international striker might be Olivier Giroud rather than Olivia Giroud.

The other good news about Aaron Mooy swapping Huddersfield for Brighton on a permanent basis is that it means three-and-a-half years more of the best GIF that Twitter has ever produced.

😏 Aaron Mooy against Arsenal…

– Most dribbles by a Brighton player

– Most passes by a Brighton player

– Most tackles on the pitch

– 1 assist

Any excuse for this gif…#ARSBHA pic.twitter.com/CkczfprERx

— The Sportsman Bet (@TheSportsmanBet) December 5, 2019