Lewis Dunk signs new five-year Brighton contract
Lewis Dunk has signed a new five-year contract with Brighton, tying the Albion captain to the club until the summer of 2025.
Dunk has been the subject of intense transfer speculation over the past two summers. A year ago, he was linked with a move to Leicester City as Harry Maguire’s replacement while rumours have intensified over recent weeks regarding Frank Lampard and Chelsea launching a £40 million bid.
Signing a new contract does not necessarily mean that Lewis Dunk will be staying with Brighton, of course. The Albion always offer their star players fresh deals whenever a new top earner arrives to ensure that they have parity with the signing.
This deal is almost certainly related to Adam Lallana’s arrival from Liverpool. Lallana took home a six-figure weekly wage at Anfield and although he is said to have taken a significant cut to move to the Amex, he will still have been on more than the £50,000-a-week that the Albion’s top earners made in 2019-20. Dunk has now presumably joined Lallana at the top of the food chain.
A new contract of course does much more than just improve Dunk’s wages. It strengthens the Albion’s position with regards to a sale; if Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs or whoever else wish to sign the Brighton captain, then they will need to come up with an offer that reflects the fact he now has five years left to run on his deal.
Even if Dunk left tomorrow, he would be assured club legend status after 306 appearances in a Brighton shirt. Whisper it quietly, but he could find himself coming close to Tug Wilson’s club record of 566 games in the stripes.
If Dunk stays injury and suspension free and averages 35-40 games per season over the course of the next five years, he would reach 500 appearances by 2025. It is then just a small hop to overhaul Wilson’s record which has stood for the best part of a century.
Dunk made his Brighton debut in the penultimate game of the 2009-10 season under Gus Poyet You Know Who. He went onto play a backup role in the 2010-11 League One title winning season before long-term injuries to Adam El-Abd and Tommy Elphick saw him thrust into the first team picture for the opening campaign at the Amex.
It was in the 2014-15 that Dunk established himself as a first team regular, his promotion to the starting line up being the only good thing to come out of Sami Hyypia’s reign of terror. Dunk even managed to finish as top scorer, a sign of just how dire that year was for the Albion.
He has since gone from strength-to-strength, becoming one of the first names on the team sheet as Brighton won promotion to the Premier League and inheriting the armband from Bruno in 2018.
The mistakes and silly red cards that littered his earlier career are a thing of the past and he has now captained the Albion at Wembley twice, a feat no other Brighton player has achieved.
Dunk won his solitary England cap so far against the United States in November 2018. That he has not received a call up since is controversial to say the least, especially after a 2019-20 season in which he was one of the best defenders in the Premier League – and a runaway winner of our WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Season accolade with a record-breaking 75% of the vote.
What remaining at the Amex for five more years might do for his international chances remains to be seen. Gareth Southgate might not appreciate the talents of Lewis Dunk, but Brighton fans certainly do – which is why this news is so welcome.
From Withdean to Wembley to what could now be a 15 year spell as a Brighton player. Dunk is one of our own.
