Teddy Jenks jets off for a season on loan at Aberdeen
Brighton & Hove Albion’s Under 23 squad captain Teddy Jenks will get his first taste of regular senior football in 2021-22 after agreeing to join Aberdeen on a season long loan.
Jenks was made captain of the development squad in 2020-21 set up despite being only 19-years-old. He is one of the brightest prospects to come through the Seagulls’ academy, has been capped at Under 17s level by England and already has two first team appearances for the Albion in the Camila Cabello Cup to his name.
He made his senior bow in Brighton blue and white when Graham Potter controversially named an Under 12s line up in a 3-1 third round defeat against Aston Villa in September 2019.
Jenks impressed from the start against a strong Villa side that evening. He was then a second half substitute in last season’s historic 2-0 win at Preston North End, the first victory at Deepdale in Brighton history.
The midfielder is capable of playing both as a holding player and as a number 10. With Graham Potter a manager who values versatility in his squad above all else, Jenks looks well placed to make the breakthrough in the not-too-distant future.
His record for the Under 23s reads 39 appearances across Premier League 2 and the Papa John’s Trophy, 10 goals and three assists. For a player only one year out of Under 18s football, that is an impressive return.
The move to Pittodrie is a strange one for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it means that Jenks does not follow the loan progression pathway of League Two, League One and Championship which has prepared the likes of Ben White, Robert Sanchez and Christian Walton to break into the first team squad at the Amex.
That Jenks is heading straight to the Scottish Premier League – where he will also play Europa Conference football with Aberdeen – rather than somewhere like Newport County or Forest Green Rovers for the first loan move of his career tells you how highly he is rated by Brighton.
Secondly, it seems odd that Teddy Jenks is off to Aberdeen just six weeks or so after Brighton announced a formal link up with Hibernian. You would have thought that if he was heading anywhere in the land of haggis and men wearing skirts with no underwear, it would have been to Easter Road as part of that new strategic partnership.
Having said that, Aberdeen do have a good record of helping young English midfielders at the start of their careers. James Maddison spent time with the Dons as a 20-year-old on loan from Norwich City in the first half of the 2016-17 season.
Maddison has since gone onto become one of the most productive number 10s in the Premier League and is also fronting a campaign for Boohoo Men’s Fashion.
If Jenks wants to make it as a professional at the highest level and have his face plastered all over the London Underground looking like an extra from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, then Maddison’s journey since moving to Pittodrie will offer a lot of encouragement.
Of course, anything involving Brighton and Aberdeen gives us a chance to mention WAB favourite Mark McGhee. The whiskey pint drinker won three Scottish titles with the Dons, the European Cup Winner’s Cup and the UEFA Super Cup as a player before returning for a 17 month spell as manager between June 2009 and December 2010.
Players who have played for both Aberdeen and Brighton are few and far between. The most successful is Doug Rougvie, a teammate of McGhee’s in that most successful Dons side of all time.
Rougvie went onto join Brighton ahead of the 1987-88 season, captaining the Albion for the majority of the campaign as Barry Lloyd’s side won promotion from the third tier. He remains a popular figure in Sussex and is a guaranteed correct answer in at least one WAB Friday Quiz out of every five.
