Chelsea might have Winstanley, but Brighton have Bloom

And so the asset stripping continues. Member of staff number six pillaged from Brighton by Glow Up Graham Potter and Chelsea is the Albion’s head of recruitment, Paul Winstanley.

The Seagulls’ transfer business has been admired for several seasons now for its ability to find rough diamonds with potential from across the world, polish them into superstars capable of challenging for the Premier League’s top eight and then sell them on for huge profit.

That money is then reinvested and the cycle starts all over again. When the likes of Yves Bissouma, Marc Cucurella and Ben White leave there is another cab already waiting on the rank to take their place.

Any of Leandro Trossard, Moises Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister or Robert Sanchez will be the next big sale in the upcoming year.

The biggest clubs in the world are all said to be interested in those four. And Chelsea; of course Chelsea, they will take anything from the Amex which is not screwed down. A £20 million bid for Gully is incoming, according to WAB sources.

But their buying of Winstanley for a cool fee rumoured to be in excess of £1 million may not be the win which Todd Boehly and the Blues think it is.

Whilst Winstanley oversaw recruitment as the head of department, it is Tony Bloom and the advanced data analytics of his Starlizard company which drove Brighton to find bargains like Caicedo, Mac Allister, Kaoru Mitoma and Julio Enciso from far flung corners of the planet.

Bloom founded Starlizard in 2006 and the company very quickly became world leaders in sporting data. They use this data to predict the outcome of matches and events across a variety of sports with a stunning degree of accuracy.

With predictions made, they then place bets on behalf of their clients with high frequency using bookmakers based largely in Asia. It is rumoured that to use Starlizard, a new customer has to stake an initial £2 million. Puts my £5 Saturday accumulator in Ladbrokes Southwick into perspective.

Starlizard do not beat the market all the time, but they do it enough to make their already rich clients even richer.

How does it all work? Well, that is the beauty of it – hardly anybody knows. Starlizard employees have to sign famously strict nondisclosure agreements the moment they walk through the door.

Bloom does not forgive or forget anyone who takes his secrets and uses them to their own advantage. Hence why he shuns Brentford owner Matthew Benham whenever Brighton face the Bees.

To further protect the process, different departments at Starlizard are only privy to the information needed to carry out their particular role in the analytics and betting process.

Very, very few people – perhaps only Bloom himself – know how the pieces all fit together and the analytics work to produce such successful betting results. Or in the case of the Albion, transfer business.

It would seem improbable that Bloom would spill the beans to a single employee, knowing full well the day might come when Winstanley would leave Brighton for Chelsea (or any other club for that matter) and take all the knowledge with him.

Winstanley will of course have access to data at Chelsea. But he will not have the analytics he did at Brighton, nor Starlizard’s unknown algorithms which enable the Albion to identify talent otherwise overlooked by the rest of the Premier League.

There was an interesting interview with Alexis Mac Allister on Sky Sports earlier in the week. Mac Allister was asked if prior to the Albion showing interest in him back in 2018, he had been contacted by any other clubs in Europe.

“Not really,” said Mac Allister. “I was playing for Argentinos Juniors and Brighton came to Argentina. They spoke with me and my agent, and said I was one of the best Under 21 players with the best numbers – because Brighton work a lot with numbers and statistics.”

Other clubs would have had both data on Mac Allister and watched him play for Argentinos Juniors. It was only Brighton though who analysed Mac Allister’s numbers in such a way that they pinpointed him as a future superstar.

And even in the unlikely even that Winstanley does know exactly how Starlizard and Bloom use data, the algorithms are modified and adapted all the time. You do not stay at the top of the sports betting world for 16 years by standing still.

That has been reflected in the way Brighton have changed their approach to recruitment throughout their time as a Premier League club.

Initially, it was focussed on players performing in lesser European leagues who were highlighted as being capable of making the step up to English football.

Some of those signings worked – Davy Propper, Maty Ryan, Yves Bissouma and especially Pascal Gross were successes – whilst others did not. Hello, Alireza Jahanbakhsh, DJ Jurgen Locadia, Bernardo and Florin Andone.

Next came a shift to signing Football League players and giving them a shot at the Premier League. Neal Maupay arrived from Brentford, Adam Webster from Bristol City, Matt Clarke from Portsmouth, David Button from Fulham and to a lesser extent, Aaron Mooy from Huddersfield Town.

Brighton are currently in the midst of a dalliance with South America. Caicedo, Enciso and Facundo Buonanotte have all arrived direct from the continent. Pervis Estupinan and Jeremy Sarmiento are Ecuador internationals to have come via Spain and Portugal respectively.

Who knows where Brighton’s data will lead them next? The Far East perhaps, given the roaring success Mitoma has proven in his brief Albion career so far.

Winstanley might take to Chelsea with him some knowledge about how Brighton recruit players. He might know the names of individuals currently high on the Seagulls’ target list and can advise Boehly to pay an obscene amount of money to snare them ahead of Bloom.

But how Brighton are so good at recruitment is a secret tied up in algorithms, analytics and how to read data which only Bloom and Starlizard know.

The only way Chelsea will ever get their keys to that particular kingdom is by buying Bloom himself. Now, hang on…