Should Paul Winstanley be following Chris Hughton out the door?

Chris Hughton has paid the ultimate price for Brighton and Hove Albion’s disastrous Premier League form in the second half of the 2018-19 season – but should Head of Recruitment Paul Winstanley be following the popular manager out of the exit door as well?

Whilst Hughton alone has to answer for his decision to switch from the successful 4-4-1-1 to 4-3-3, his lack of attacking intent in important games against sides around the Albion in the table and his inability to impact games with substitutions, there is no doubt that he hasn’t been helped in the recruitment department.

That’s something which Paul Hayward eluded to in his excellent piece for the Daily Telegraph on Hughton’s sacking. As an Albion supporter, Hayward is more qualified than most national newspaper journalists to have an opinion on the situation and he believes that Hughton had been badly let down by the players the club have signed for him.

He writes, “Those Brighton fans meanwhile who blamed the manager 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.”

It’s hard to argue with that assessment. In the past three transfer windows, the Albion have spent north of £50m and have only one player who has become an established first team regular to show for it – Bernardo.

Jahabankhsh has proven to be a £17m disaster. Some supporters will point to the fact that they believe Hughton hasn’t used him correctly, but even so how can a club’s record buy have made 25 appearances this season, played 1,530 minutes and yet failed to score a single goal or register one assist?

It’s a colossal waste of money, even more so when you consider that the club’s own scouts had highlighted Sheffield United’s David Brooks as a player of potential.

The recruitment team instead ruled Jahanbakhsh as the better option and so Brooks moved to Plucky Little Bournemouth for £11m – £6m less than Jahanbakhsh cost – where he has scored seven goals and notched five assists.

Locadia arrived for £14m from PSV Eindhoven six months before Jahanbakhsh and has managed three goals and one assist in the Premier League in his one-and-a-half seasons at the Amex.

Like Jahanbakhsh, Locadia has his supporters who say he hasn’t been used correctly, but Hughton has given him multiple opportunities in that position on the left of a front three that most of his goals in the Netherlands came from.

Indeed, you could make the case that the disastrous decision to move to 4-3-3 was made in part to get him into the team and yet we still have seen nothing to suggest that he is worthy of being Brighton’s third most expensive ever signing.

At times, he’s looked more interested in trying to launch a music career than being a professional footballer and the doubts about his attitude weren’t helped when he spoke to the press about his desire to leave the Albion for Spain or Germany before the January transfer window, saying he didn’t understand why he hadn’t been given a chance. We’ve got a pretty good idea why and it’s essentially because he is crap.

Three goals and one assist from £31m worth of attacking talent is a pathetic return. It could be even worse had the Albion not had to wait a year to sign Andone. The recruitment team very nearly sanctioned his arrival from Deportivo La Coruna for £15m in 2017 before managing to trigger his relegation release clause 12 months later following Depor’s relegation from La Liga at the end of last season.

Whilst Andone has had some impressive moments, he has still only notched three Premier League goals. Indeed, he’s proven to be more of a threat to the referee’s notebook than opposition goalkeepers, picking up five yellow cards and a retrospective three-game ban for swinging an elbow into the head of West Bromwich Albion’ Sam Field when the Albion went to the Hawthorns for their FA Cup Fourth Round replay in January.

Because we picked him up for £5.2m rather than £15m, the Andone deal doesn’t seem like such a bad piece of business. But imagine if we’d paid the full asking price for him a year previously. £15m for a player with a questionable injury record and a temperament that has put him in a lot of hot water in a relatively short period of time.

Total up Jahanbakhsh, Locadia and that huge fee we managed to avoid for Andone and you’ve got three attack minded players signed for a combined £47m who have scored six goals and claimed one assist between them. That’s an absolutely shocking return for such an outlay.

Of Winstanley’s other recruits, there is clearly a lot of talent in Yves Bissouma but he is still extremely raw and requires a lot of work on the defensive side of his game. That’s something the new manager whoever he may be will need to focus on.

Martin Montoya hasn’t entirely convinced and lost his place to a 38-year-old Bruno as the season began to unravel. Leon Balogun and Dan Burn look like capable back up defenders and David Button has proven to be an able deputy to Maty Ryan.

In their wisdom, the recruitment team decided to sign not one first team player in January. Instead, they spent over £10m on three players we won’t see in Brighton colours until at least this summer – Tudor Băluță, Jan Mlakar and Kevin Mac Allister.

There’s even some doubts now that the £7m Mac Allister won’t qualify for a work permit, leaving us with a more expensive, Argentinian version of Percy Tau who needs to be loaned somewhere in Europe to try and make him legally eligible to play in Britain.

Brighton’s recruitment over the past 18 months just hasn’t been good enough. Not even Monet could paint a masterpiece with a lump of shit and a pencil, yet that is effectively what Winstanley and the Albion’s recruitment team have given Hughton to work with. There’s no getting away from the fact it’s one of the contributing factors to Hughton losing his job.

So, why hasn’t Winstanley as well? It’s a just question given that the buck for transfers ultimately ends with him. He’s wasted over £50m of Tony Bloom’s money on a set of players – Bernardo and Bissouma aside – whom have done very little to improve this Brighton squad.

Hughton sadly had to go because of form and tactics. Winstanley should consider himself lucky he hasn’t followed. Because if Brighton don’t get their recruitment this summer, then the next manager is going to be facing an uphill battle from the start.