Brighton’s departures highlight the terrible transfer dealings of 2018
When Graham Potter was named as Brighton manager, there were many reasons given for his appointment in place of the sacked Chris Hughton.
His commitment to entertaining, attacking football. His willingness to give youth a chance. His ability to take previously under performing individuals and get them playing towards their full potential.
On two of those traits, Potter is already delivering. In four Premier League games so far, we’ve had 34 shots on goal and Pep Guardiola – one of the greatest managers in the history of football – has vaunted the Albion for their bold approach.
Hughton afforded a grand total of 18 minutes of competitive league football to development squad players who made their league debuts under him in four-and-a-half years at the helm.
Potter has already beaten that with Aaron Connolly’s 24 minutes away at Manchester City. There will no doubt be plenty more game time for the 19-year-old striker to come, given he is effectively third choice behind Neal Maupay and Glenn Murray until at least January.
When it comes to the third and final point, many Albion fans assumed that Potter would be the man to finally extract performances worthy of the £17m paid for Alireza Jahanbakhsh, the £14m paid for Jurgen Locadia and even the £5m paid for Florin Andone.
The theory went something like this. With a more attacking manager, Jahanbakhsh’s nightmare first season in which he failed to score or register an assist in 1,530 minutes on the pitch would be banished from memory.
Locadia would produce the sort of performance he managed away at Millwall in the FA Cup Quarter Finals on a more regular basis. Andone would show why Brighton wanted to pay £15m for a him a year before they snared their man for a third of that price because of a relegation release clause in his Deportivo La Coruna contract.
But instead, Andone has been sent to Turkey with Galatasary, Locadia is turning out in Germany for Hoffenheim and Jahanbakhsh is yet to play a minute of Premier League football having failed to make the matchday 18 for the first three games.
It’s a damning indictment of Brighton’s transfer business throughout 2018 that three attacking players who cost a combined £36m – and it could have been a staggering £46m had we got Andone in the summer of 2017 when we wanted him – have all been cast aside after less than two years.
In the aftermath of Hughton’s sacking, Albion fan and journalist Paul Hayward wrote an excellent piece in the Daily Telegraph. He said, “Those Brighton fans meanwhile who blamed Hughton for “wasting money” ignored the fact that the club’s recruitment department, not Hughton, determined transfer policy. There is a strong case for saying Hughton has paid the price for mistakes made elsewhere in the club.”
“Hughton raised them from 17th in the Championship to 15th in the club’s first season in the top tier since 1983, and then kept them up again after a summer of underwhelming buys up front. Florin Andone, Alireza Jahanbakhsh and Jurgen Locadia have added little to Hughton’s strong defensive block of Lewis Dunk and Shane Duffy.”
The countenance to Hayward’s view that these players weren’t very good was that Hughton simply didn’t know how to use them. The fact that Potter has sent two on loan to foreign lands and given the other just a single run out in the Carabao Cup suggests that it’s Hayward who is right and Hughton who was dealt a terrible hand by Paul Winstanley.
What Potter’s clear out has done is shine an uncomfortable light on the work of Winstanley and his recruitment team’s work over the course of 2018.
While it’s not quite on a par with David Burke deciding to replace future Premier League winner Leonardo Ulloa with Chris O’Grady. Or signing so many loan players that we exceeded the seven you are allowed in a Championship matchday squad. Or bringing in Ali al-Habsi but failing to realise he was off to play in the Asian Cup for Oman a week later. Winstanley must still consider himself very lucky to still be in a job.
Of course, fast forward a year and Winstanley might well have redeemed himself. Leandro Trossard looks a real find, Maupay has already got a goal to his name and Adam Webster looks an intriguing prospect based on the little we’ve seen of him so far.
And then there is Dan Burn. Signed for £3.5m from Wigan Athletic a year ago, he was loaned back to the Latics for the first five months of his Albion career and then spent the second half of last season sitting on the Brighton bench.
Four games into the Potter era and Burn’s defending like one of the best centre backs in the Premier League, popping up on the left wing to deliver David Beckham-esque crosses and getting applauded by Serio Aguero for a first touch that goes viral on the Manchester City Twitter account.
While we all thought it would be Jahanbakhsh, Locadia or Andone that Potter transformed, it’s actually been Burn who has turned into a Blyth-born version of Franz Beckenbauer. On the other three, the new Brighton boss has made his judgement and it isn’t good news for Winstanley and his team.
With rumours of a £14m loss for the 2018-19 season set to be announced in the coming days and £36m having been wasted on players that Potter no longer wants nor needs, things could be about to get a whole lot worse for those in the transfer department.
Because Brighton’s recruitment last year wasn’t good enough. The departures Potter has allowed to happen prove it.
