The three positions Brighton still need to strengthen in

It’s been a relatively quiet summer transfer window so far for Brighton and Hove Albion. Only two players have come through the door, and on the face of it they are in positions in which we are relatively well stocked.

Centre back Matt Clarke has arrived for £3.5m from Portsmouth to jostle with Lewis Dunk, Shane Duffy, Leon Balogun and Dan Burn for a place in the starting line up.

Leandro Trossard is the other arrival, the Genk captain having cost a club record £18m to bring to the Amex from Belgium. He’ll be competing with Solly March, Anthony Knockaert, Jose Izquierdo and Alireza Jahanbakhsh for a spot out wide.

For our money, that leaves three positions in which the Albion need to further strengthen the squad if we are to become more competitive and avoid a repeat of last season’s struggles.

Right back
The position which most glaringly needs reinforcements is right back. With Bruno having retired, Martin Montoya remains the only senior member of the squad who is fit and can fill that position.

Ezequiel Schelotto has returned from his loan with Chievo but is currently sidelined with the cruciate knee ligament injury that he sadly picked up early in his spell in Italy.

Not only that, but on his last two starts in an Albion shirt – the 4-0 defeat at Liverpool and the 3-2 loss at Crystal Palace – he looked like he’d won a cornflake competition to play. If Schelotto is the answer, we dread to think what the question is.

What Potter does with regards to the right back slot could be extremely telling in terms of how he intends to set up this season.

Should he sign a more attack-minded wing back, it might suggest he’s looking to move to a 3-5-2 formation. That would also explain the capture of Clarke. Currently, it is hard to see why we need five centre backs to fill two starting positions.

If it’s a traditional right back, then that would point more towards a back four. Either way, the Albion need to do something as it’s the one position we look desperately short in currently.

Holding midfielder
On paper, it looks like the Albion have a good mix of central midfielders. Dale Stephens, Beram Kayal, Davy Propper, Yves Bissouma and Pascal Gross can all fulfil a variety of roles and bring different attributes to the party.

What we’re really missing though is a quality defensive midfielder. One of the major problems that came with Chris Hughton’s fateful switch to 4-3-3 was that there wasn’t anyone to effectively carry out the role of a proper holding midfielder.

Dale Stephens was the man Hughton turned to for the job, but that was very much a round peg in a square hole. That’s why Stephens’ form fell off a cliff in the second half of the season, which led to him receiving even more abuse from Albion fans than he normally gets.

Propper would be wasted as a holding midfielder and he rarely tackles. Bissouma would be a liability given his lack of positional discipline. Kayal has the right skill set to perform the role, but he isn’t really of the quality to be starting every week in the Premier League.

Then there is new signing Tudor Baluta. The £2.5m capture has filled the role for both his former club Viitorul Constanța and the Romanian national team.

Potter isn’t afraid to throw young players in and it will be intriguing to see if 20-year-old Baluta features regularly as part of the first team squad in pre-season after earning rave reviews during Romania Under 21s run to the semi finals of the European Championships.

Should Baluta not be the answer, then the Albion need to find themselves a genuine holding midfielder. That makes recent rumours linking the club with a move for Newcastle United’s Isaac Hayden interesting.

The Northern Echo have reported that Brighton and West Ham United are leading the chase for the £15m rated Hayden, who would not only provide an answer to the problem but would also count towards the Albion’s homegrown player quota.

Striker
In case you hadn’t heard, Glenn Murray is going to turn 36 this season. While he hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down yet – Murray actually scored more goals in 2018-19 than in 2017-18 – he won’t be able to go on forever.

We certainly can’t rely on him to net 36% of our goals this season, as he has over the past two Premier League campaigns. Which is a record by the way – no other team in top flight history has ever been so reliant on one man to score for them.

The trouble is, signing strikers is much easier said than done. If a decent one becomes available, chances are that every other team in the bottom half of the Premier League is going to want their signature – and if you’ve got Watford, Bournemouth and West Ham United sniffing around, why would said player pick Brighton who finished just two points clear of relegation last time?

Every summer, we seem to go through this. Even before Gus Poyet led the Albion to the League One title in 2011, the talk was all of needing another centre forward if we were to challenge for promotion.

Will this year be any different in terms of finally signing that man? Probably not. Chances are we’ll have to smash our transfer record and fight off a number of other clubs unless Tony Bloom is willing to open the cheque book on another risk from foreign lands.

As a result, we live more in hope than expectation of bringing in a centre forward. In which case, it will be up to Florin Andone and Jurgen Locadia to step up to the mark and ease the burden on Murray.